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The more you learn, the faster you can learn

pranay.gp

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Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#91

Post by pranaygp »

jsf01 wrote: post #82

There comes a point in the learning process for any subject where you get so excited about the fact that you understand something new that you feel you need to tell everyone about it. This feels like one of those posts—the author has very limited experience, but he has formalized a coherent (albeit unoriginal) idea and because of that exciting feeling he now wants to shout it to the world. It’s good to write as an ex…

Bingo! I am an author with very limited experience and this was an exercise in growing and solidifying my own ideas. To that end, I chose to write about an underdeveloped idea and share it with the world. If you look me up, you'll find a string of unfinished and incomplete projects and ideas. I'm usually not scared about sharing underdeveloped ideas prematurely - I think it helps me grow (I wouldn't have gotten as much feedback on this post if I never shared it)

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#92

Post by foxhop »

chaboud wrote: post #80
foxhop wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I really enjoyed reading and discussing this blog post over our morning coffee. The author said it himself that he has trouble writing and maybe more importantly posting his work for others to read. That said, I can see how the first paragraph (with it's the self-congratulatory tone) could have primed you with these feelings. I'm a firm believer that there is nothing wrong with re-explaining a well known…

Yeah... I don't think you got my point at all (which may be down to how I made it). The author started with "I amaze people with how well I can learn", bridged with "here's my method", which could be reduced to the mixed-media version of the stereotypical programmer who "read one book about that once" (which drives experts crazy), and closed with "I think I've optimized this! Behold!" So it easily reads as hubris, po…

: )

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#93

Post by pranaygp »

esseeayen wrote: post #89

Hi OP I am wondering if you ever did the corsera course "Learning how to learn" and what your thoughts were on it and if the you consciously or unconsciously employed the methods described to help you learn new topics.

OP here, I haven't actually, but just looked it up and it looks like it talks more about test prep than the type of learning I talk about. Most of my coding skills come from self-learning things online the way I talked about it, at my own pace, without exams to reinforce that.

However, for test prep, through school and college I have read and tried a lot of guides on learning including simple index cards, the Leitner System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system), coming up with mnemonics, transcribing content from a source medium to some other medium, the Feynman technique, etc.

What I learnt about myself was that any technique involving writing didn't work for me. I would never go back to read something I wrote. I hated writing. I often walked into lectures without a notebook and just listened instead. Don't memorize. Listen. Understand. I have friends who were brilliant "test takers" - which to me meant they could quickly memorize a lot just before an exam. That's something I'm bad at, so I took tests primarily based on what I'd understood over lectures, or follow up discussions I had with professors or classmates.

This also means I wouldn't practice math questions or work out physics problems before a test - I'd sorta just read over solved problems and make sure I understood them.

In retrospect, I actually think this isn't a great way to study for an exam and I always got very nervous just before a test because I feel grossly underprepared, but I saw passing them as a formality and usually just worked on other things I found fun (for instance, I built CSS Peek during finals week of sophomore year).

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#94

Post by proverbialbunny »

petra wrote: post #67
proverbialbunny wrote: post #24

I made a hobby out of exploring how learning works. The author is spot on. However, there are some tweaks worth considering: 1) The author proposes learning _everything_ under the sun, so that one has enough dependencies to learn new topics. This is like downloading most of the packages in aptitude to speed up builds. However, I prefer to go about it in a different way. I focus on patience and normalizing myself to l…

Really Insightful comment. You seem to know a lot about doing rapid learning well. Any recommendations on what to read if I want to understand more about how learning works ?

Unfortunately, I do not have a recommendation.

I learned everything about learning by reviewing my notes. I take notes in a condense and highly abstract format that is quick to write, yet simultaneously gives something close to a one-to-one map of my mind. This way when I review I can learn better ways to study.

How I learned my technique:

I do Data Science / Data Analytics. When it comes to programming a Data Scientist can get by not knowing how to write a function. Many are horrid coders, and that's okay because they specialize in research and analytics, not writing code. However, if a DS' day to day is writing code, and it's the most painful part of the day, then would my life be better if I knew how to program flawlessly?

In response to this question I took a job as a Software Engineer for a while, doing hard core C++14 at the time. (The company gave me the hardest project they had to incentivize me to go back to doing DS for them.) I had learned C many years ago but when it came to C++ I struggled with making a class. I struggled at knowing what the difference between a copy and a move was. I struggled with multiple inheritance. I struggled with smart pointers. I even struggled with reference collapsing rules. It was painful!

In response, I developed the learning technique mentioned above, and decided to learn C++ at an accelerated rate. I learned over 250 concepts in less than a half a year, while being productive in a code base, and not just 250 concepts, but I learned the etymology of every concept. I learned how, why, and when to use them. I became a master at C++ and now it is my favorite language. C++ was a great use of this learning technique, because when I learned something it would come up again maybe weeks or months later. I wanted to know C++ so well I never had to google for anything ever again.

Long story short, C++ is a great candidate for meta-learning. That's how I learned what I know.

Also, the article mentions how subjects cross domains. This is a key aspect of my learning too. Inspired by Hofstadter, isomorphisms between domains has been a hobby of mine too, and I find both Data Science and Discrete Mathematics to be useful when it comes to the study of intelligence and the study of communication. I highly recommend doing the same. It's not only fun, but it can change your life.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#95

Post by pranaygp »

proverbialbunny wrote: post #24

I made a hobby out of exploring how learning works. The author is spot on. However, there are some tweaks worth considering: 1) The author proposes learning _everything_ under the sun, so that one has enough dependencies to learn new topics. This is like downloading most of the packages in aptitude to speed up builds. However, I prefer to go about it in a different way. I focus on patience and normalizing myself to l…

I love #4 and is something I do all the time but never thought about it till reading your comment!

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#96

Post by proverbialbunny »

esseeayen wrote: post #89

Hi OP I am wondering if you ever did the corsera course "Learning how to learn" and what your thoughts were on it and if the you consciously or unconsciously employed the methods described to help you learn new topics.

imho if you plan on taking the course, try to find a better solution to every idea they suggest. The ideas behind why learning is the way it is are valid and well researched, but their solutions, while valid, could be better.

If the course moved from a set of rules to a set of principles and a philosophy, imho the course would be more useful.

One of the few things that blew my mind in the course was how they interviewed someone who went around the world learning different languages at an accelerated rate. His method is to learn enough to ask questions, then he only spoke in that language slowly picking up the language the way a kid does.

Most of the class comes down to differentiating between a focused and diffused state (though it's really a spectrum) and how to get into each mental state and the benefits of doing so.

imho, if you want to accelerate learning, learn how to meditate. It will increase awareness and reduce distractions. Though this is a bit more advanced than the class' recommendation.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#97

Post by pranaygp »

mettamage wrote: post #65

This post could be expanded with what learning resources you found really awesome and why. I use HN to find the best programming and math resources by using their search function, looking at the most upvoted learning resources or by scouring the comments and finding a consensus in a more qualitative manner. On the top of my head: it led me to places such as Gilbert Strang for linear algebra or Eloquent JavaScript for…

Definitely, I listed a few examples of great resources to make a point on the article. Another resource that seems like it might be great that I'm currently reading is Julian Shapiro's growth marketing guide - https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro

It is long form text, which is an automatic -1 for me, and I dismissed this for a while, but over time it's seemed to come out as one of those "great" resources in a different domain that I muse read. After starting, I noticed

1. It reads more like vimtutor than an article; i.e. you pick your own adventure, which I can bite

2. Many people I look up to as experts have directly recommended this to me

3. It's relevant to me now - I'm working on a startup

I still dismissed the guide for a long time and wasn't convinced it was the best resource out there - but it's starting to seem like it's atleast a local maxima for me.

I hope that made sense into how I think about resources when learning. I don't yet have a coherent system in place to determine how valuable a resource is to me. I usually only know months or years later

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#98

Post by aronowb14 »

kamfc wrote: post #73
aronowb14 wrote: post #35

Interesting post! It's almost exactly what I've found that has worked well for me. Putting in the three or four hours at the beginning of the process of learning something to find the best resources is essential. That being said, I do think the importance of mastering one or two things should not be overstated, and was kind of ignored in your post. Let me elaborate: for me my deepest skill has been 3D modeling and re…

What would be some fundamentals you can recommend that's not new frameworks with unpredictable lifespan?

Great q. For computer science (which I went to school for), what they teach in good CS programs provide great fundamentals: discrete math, probability, linear algebra, data structures, algorithms, computational analysis. Other fundamentals I didn't learn in college, but am trying to pick up to make myself a better graphics programmer: general physics problem solving and thinking, as well as common system design patterns.

For art, which I'm mostly self taught in, what I've found continues to help me is color theory, composition, and graphic design principles. I'm not super far along in my art practice career compared to CS, but that's what I've learned so far.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#99

Post by meuk »

pranaygp wrote: post #56
meuk wrote: post #50

I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so. I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things ev…

OP here I'm sorry you feel that way :( > idiosyncrasies of their code I've only had about 6 months of processional work experience, 3 months of which have been open source code, so even just learning _their_ code had a huge learning impact on me because I saw it as "wow, this is how code works in production". I think I learnt less about code itself though honestly, and instead learnt the systems and how those people…

Thanks for your reply, I really appreciate it! I'll send you a mail.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#100

Post by meuk »

formalsystem wrote: post #55
meuk wrote: post #50

I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so. I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things ev…

> I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things every week. I'm thinking of taking a year off just to learn new things. Even at the senior level I don't think you'll get what you're looking for. Unless you're leading new research efforts, it won't make much sense to move you away from a system that you only understand. A friend convinced me to quit my job a year ago and I'd highly recommend it. If you can af…

Thanks for the comment! I am probably in a different position; I work in Europe and am not as wealthy as most of the US-based developers, so if I take time off it probably won't be in the near future anyway.

I'll send you a mail!

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