Effective learning: Rules of formulating knowledge (1999)

Skip to the end and read the summary first

I've been using Anki for the past year while learning German and it has been (seemingly) very helpful. I doubt I would have acquired the vocabulary I have in the past year without it. I'm not sure if this is simply due the fact that it helps make studying a habit or that SRS is as beneficial as claimed.

I have found it useful enough that I'm extending its use to other subjects I'm interested in.

Has anybody used Anki and Supermemo have thoughts on the two? I've never used supermemo - would be very interested to hear if it is worth looking into vs Anki for any reason.

The first rule "do not learn what you do not understand" is nonesense in the context of learning mathematics/physics/hard sciences.

If you understand a subject, then it means that you have learned it effectively.

In my experience with teaching at university, I have found that the wish of students to understand before learning is actually a great barrier to comprehend a subject.

In order to build intuition on a subject, a student should first try to apply it, play with it (without understanding it) and then understanding will come. But I have yet to witness a student which understand a subject without being able to use/apply the subject.

Take the notion of electric field. You could try to understand it before learning how to use it. Good luck. You are not a fish, so you probably have no sensors of electric field on your skin, and thus you have no prior notion to cling to. I contend that it is virtually impossible. Or you could try to use the concept of electric field to compute forces on charged particle, or compute the electric field created by a charge, or you could build a program that represent the electric field in space. Doing this requires no understanding, just boring substitutions in the definition of the electric field. But doing that forces you to build understanding (its a vector, it changes direction with the sign of the charges, etc, etc)

Another example is understanding how to bike. You could try to understand how balancing on a bike so that it stay upright, understand how moving the handlebar right makes you turn left or, you could just try to bike, and then understand how it works out.

So my advice: don't try to understand. Do, and do again untill you have learned. Not the other way around.

As a kid I cried at times because learning foreign words, lists of topological places, or events in history was so hard! If I don't get the structure or context I am so lost.

At electrical engineering they still tried to teach me in the same way. Giving me assignments with little context. What saved me in the end were textbooks and the internet.

The easiest way for me to understand new concepts are the subsequent generalizations or extremes. Complex numbers? Quaternions. Gradients? Clifford algebra. Sets? Categories. Fourier transform? Wavelets.

Sure there might be people who benefit from solving the puzzles from their teachers, but it assumes that every mind works the same way.

I took understanding as meaning motivation. If I was teaching electric fields I wouldn't start with the equations. Perhaps I'd start by demonstrating what an electric field is (e.g. http://practicalphysics.org/electric-fields.html), then perhaps how it's useful, and then open the discussion of what it's properties are. You can then relate the properties back to the demonstrations and applications.