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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

#111

Post by tedmcory77 »

andai wrote: post #104
tedmcory77 wrote: post #22

Yea, it's always bugged us that we learn the way folks did hundreds of years ago. Which is why we built https://www.munkle.it the way we did and focused on speed of review. I used to not like the feeling that spaced repetition did (it's always in that slightly hard stage) but apparently that's what helps you remember.

I can't tell (neither from the website, nor from using it) how this is different from any other flashcard software? You mention you focused on "speed of review". How did you do that? There are apparently no hotkeys? (My speed of review is therefore lower than Anki, due to needing to use the mouse.)

Q,W,E < No need for mouse. First card in Welcome to Munkle Deck.

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

#112

Post by portpecos »

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…

If someone were to create an animation of that physics page you described, do you think it might have shortened the time spent to digest that concept?

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

#113

Post by Balgair »

portpecos wrote: post #112
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…

If someone were to create an animation of that physics page you described, do you think it might have shortened the time spent to digest that concept?

I never really got the difference between the dot and cross products until many years after graduation. And then I only got it because I managed to stumble upon a good video with somewhat decent animations.

Like, 2-D, sure, seems easy enough. But once you go to 4-D, things get really hard to grok.

Passionate science educators online have really filled in a lot of my education.

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

#115

Post by watwut »

readingnews wrote: post #40
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…

This is the "problem" today that I see in the classroom (I used to teach CS until recently)... learners today do not want to dedicate the time it takes to truly understand. Not all of them, but a LOT of them have the opinion that they just need to get through this damn algorithms class, get the damn piece of paper (diploma) so they can go out and start a job doing "real" programming. Those students, they do not get F…

I remember having schoolmates like that 20 years ago.

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

#116

Post by dan-g »

pyjarrett wrote: post #62

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 t…

To others wondering about the discrepancy between SQ4R being mentioned in the comment text and the title of the linked source being SQ3R (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R), it looks like others [1] add an additional R (marked with an asterisk below), for the following:

  1. Survey
  2. Question
  3. Read
  4. Recite
  5. *Rephrase
  6. Review
[1] https://www.american.edu/provost/academic-access/sq4r.cfm

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

#117

Post by WalterBright »

dotnet00 wrote: post #67
andai wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 throu…

That's the way it happened for me with computer programming.

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

#118

Post by loughnane »

Books work—good books anyway—, but most of us aren’t taught how to read well.

The next time you want to get something from a book do some new things with it.

1. Skim it first.

2. Find some interesting entries in the index if it has one and jump there to check it out.

3. Ask questions while you read. Write them down the book.

4. Reread the book (spaced repetition). It will go faster because you e built a structure with your notes the first time.

5. Don’t waste time on bad books.

A good analogy is pitching. The pitcher is the writer, the ball is the knowledge and you are the catcher. Nothing works if the pitcher can’t throw or if the catcher can’t catch. Likewise if there’s no ball to throw.

So it is you’ll get nothing out of the book if the writer can’t deliver or has nothing to say. But a well crafted book stuffed with knowledge won’t to any good if you receive it.

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

#119

Post by Asraelite »

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…

I agree with your point but I think playing a musical instrument is a bad analogy because of one fundamental difference:

In most intellectual fields, you can take your sweet time to remember what you learned so long as you remember it eventually. Music requires practice to recall everything in real time.

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

#120

Post by dotnet00 »

cvhashim04 wrote: post #102
dotnet00 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 throu…

This describes me as well. I’ve started to call it paying the “time tax” or “staring tax”, I have to just review tough concepts (code, concept, leetcode solution, math problem) for a long while before it eventually clicks.

That brings to mind a learning staircase that comes up in art, where you go between stages of learning to draw better and learning to observe better. Since you can't draw better until you can observe better, but you can't observe better if you can't draw well enough to match your current observation skills. So in a similar way, you have to pay some "time tax" to move forward.
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