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Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

dwarkeshpatel.com

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Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#61

Post by wegfawefgawefg »

andai wrote: post #9
konschubert wrote: post #4

When I studied Physics, I could sometimes take hours to digest a single page of a textbook or my lecture notes - providing that it was a good textbook. It’s not enough to just understand what is written. You have to understand why it is like described. Why it can’t be different - or could it? You need to build an intuition for both the physics and the math describing it. You have to push until it clicks. It’s hard wo…

When learning new programming concepts, I would often have to learn them 5 or 10 times before they clicked. Once they clicked, they seemed completely obvious, and I couldn't imagine what it's like to not understand it. Two mathematicians are discussing a theorem. The first mathematician says that the theorem is trivial. He then proceeds with two hours of exposition. At the end of the explanation, the second mathemati…

I used to require this, but after having spent many years programming this stopped being the case. I've reached the point where i can see a new abstraction and usually immediatly understand it, regardless of language.

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#62

Post by pyjarrett »

The real problem is teaching children that "reading" is merely decoding words off a page, and "listening" is merely hearing the words someone says.

The book itself is a way to open the door to learning, not the end point. Reading subject titles first, cross-referencing, and working examples and doing projects help teach and cement ideas.

There's techniques like SQ4R [1] for reading, and hugely applicable to general technical and article reading is "How to read a paper" [2]. For lecturers, there's "How to Speak" [3], and for those attending a talk there's the Cornell Notes system. [4]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R

[2]: https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPape...

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#63

Post by zabzonk »

Tainnor wrote: post #54
zabzonk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it happens in the uk as well as the us - university lecturers are bribed by the publishers.

Do you have any evidence specifically about lecturers being bribed? Because there could be a whole other range of other explanations for why this practice continues.

working for two uk universities. and this not the only stuff these corrupt people got up to - one had the cheek to photocopy his own (crap) book using free to him university copiers, and then make his students pay for the copies. nothing was done about it, of course.

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#64

Post by wegfawefgawefg »

beebeepka wrote: post #53
Tainnor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologise if I have caused any offense, because that wasn't my intent. I feel you missed the main point of my comment, though. Even if abstract reasoning, or certain forms of abstract reasoning, were not natural to you (something that I can impossibly judge), it wouldn't mean, as you initially claimed, that it would be impossible to teach you mathematics.

Oh, understood the main point just fine. You are not wrong. Just got a little upset about the rest. I wouldn't have reacted as I did had you phrased it a bit differently, like in the post I am currently replying to.

I don't think your offense was warranted. You've got a chip on your shoulder. Other people may be able to tell but either haven't confronted you about it, because it wasn't worth it to them, or you haven't responded well to feedback.

Either way I recommend reflecting on it.

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#65

Post by dilawar »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #32

I find two things help me learn: A top down description: start with what something is, why it's important, and how it fits in with other things, then an outline of the details, then the finer details and so on. This is almost impossible to find in textbooks or lectures, which for the most part are bottom up. Trying to figure out the thing without any help, or very little help, at each step of the above. This sounds p…

> Trying to figure out the thing without any help, or very little help, at each step of the above. This sounds pointless, but it actually works really well

I found it to be very effective though time consuming. Even if you don't figure out the solution, when you read other solution later, everything just clicks.

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#66

Post by seanmcdirmid »

konschubert wrote: post #4

When I studied Physics, I could sometimes take hours to digest a single page of a textbook or my lecture notes - providing that it was a good textbook. It’s not enough to just understand what is written. You have to understand why it is like described. Why it can’t be different - or could it? You need to build an intuition for both the physics and the math describing it. You have to push until it clicks. It’s hard wo…

I simply can’t read the text book, at least without context. Doing the problem sets over and over again works better for me. Practice is the key, it might make sense to unsuccessfully attempt the problems before ready the chapter, since you would have more context for readying.

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#67

Post by dotnet00 »

andai wrote: post #9
konschubert wrote: post #4

When I studied Physics, I could sometimes take hours to digest a single page of a textbook or my lecture notes - providing that it was a good textbook. It’s not enough to just understand what is written. You have to understand why it is like described. Why it can’t be different - or could it? You need to build an intuition for both the physics and the math describing it. You have to push until it clicks. It’s hard wo…

When learning new programming concepts, I would often have to learn them 5 or 10 times before they clicked. Once they clicked, they seemed completely obvious, and I couldn't imagine what it's like to not understand it. Two mathematicians are discussing a theorem. The first mathematician says that the theorem is trivial. He then proceeds with two hours of exposition. At the end of the explanation, the second mathemati…

I remember this having been my experience with teaching myself to code as a kid. All I remember is initial endless frustration from having to re-read tutorials and documentation and still not understanding anything. Then at some point I can't remember, everything clicked into place and I can't understand why I didn't understand it before. Once I had those basics down, I haven't had that kind of struggle.

I went through a similar phase with math, struggled with basic algebra for years, then at some point it all clicked into place and I unintentionally ended up skipping all high school algebra to get to early calculus.

It makes it really hard when helping other people through those early concepts (like pointers), because "keep working and at some point it'll just click for you" isn't very convincing.

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#68

Post by palata »

chongli wrote: post #7
konschubert wrote: post #4

When I studied Physics, I could sometimes take hours to digest a single page of a textbook or my lecture notes - providing that it was a good textbook. It’s not enough to just understand what is written. You have to understand why it is like described. Why it can’t be different - or could it? You need to build an intuition for both the physics and the math describing it. You have to push until it clicks. It’s hard wo…

Yes. This is the same for both math and programming. These skills take a lot of practice to develop. It’s like playing a musical instrument: you won’t learn how to do it if all you do is read the book. What’s strange to me is how people seem to resist this fact. Like it’s obvious to pretty much everyone that you need to practice an instrument to be able to play music on it. But for math and physics at least they seem…

To be fair, the "you need to practice an instrument to be able to play music on it" hides a very complex process.

Some people "practice" by trying to play the same thing over and over, and it is equivalent to "hearing" vs "listening". Learning how to play an instrument (and also a particular piece of music) is a very complex process. Just like you need to learn the skills to "learn from a book", you need to learn the skills to "practice an instrument".

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#69

Post by Tainnor »

zabzonk wrote: post #63
Tainnor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence specifically about lecturers being bribed? Because there could be a whole other range of other explanations for why this practice continues.

working for two uk universities. and this not the only stuff these corrupt people got up to - one had the cheek to photocopy his own (crap) book using free to him university copiers, and then make his students pay for the copies. nothing was done about it, of course.

That's of course deplorable. But it just feels to me that if it happens so regularly, there must be some systemic causes and not just instances of invidual educators being bribed

Re: Self-teaching, spaced repetition, and why books don't work

#70

Post by palata »

ekianjo wrote: post #29
ThinkBeat wrote: post #20

Books work well and have been the standard for learning many topics for hundreds of years. They have few technical problems, Easy to sell, borrow, give away. Yes, you can go about reading a book in different ways depending on what and why you are reading and what works for you. I think it is highly unfortunate that universities these days, at least in science, then to force students to buy a new edition every year, o…

Most books are very badly written.

Most [everything] is bad. It's your job to find the good ones and enjoy them.
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