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In Praise of Memorization

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Re: In Praise of Memorization

#11

Post by historia_novae »

turboponyy wrote: post #5

I've never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them. Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn't help but remember them eventually. I'm of the opinion that this leads…

>I'm of the opinion that this leads to a good rule of thumb: never memorize anything

Did you ever learn another language? It's impossible without memorizing a massive amount of things, especially when the writing system is different than the one one is familiar with. In fact the most famous researcher in vocabulary learning (Paul Nation) states in one of his book that rote learning is one of the most efficient use of time.

I'm of the reverse opinion that memorizing things is a "secret trick" particularly effective, that is put aside by a lot of people because it takes effort.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#12

Post by gxs »

Memorization is a stepping stone on the way to mastery.

Reminds me a bit of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari

The agile people have gotten ahold of this principle, but it's pretty cool.

Paraphrased:

Shu - learn to repeat and mimic exactly what the master is doing

Ha - Once you've (memorized?) learned the movements, then you can innovate and add your own twist to it

Ri - Finally, once you've learned to mimic the master and have learned to push boundaries, you can start redrawing them and improvising

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#13

Post by baash05 »

In University I had a prof that gave us 600 facts at the start of the year. All printed and easy to read. Each class we went over a few of them.

He said if you mastered 100% you'd get 100% on the exam. He would pick from the lot and that's the exam question.

His reasoning was. These are the basics, we were all smart, and we could use the basics to go beyond them. But only if we had them.

20+ years later and I still remember most of the things in that class. I can still write code in assembly (8086). I don't need to, but I have the knowledge, and it's helped shape my code.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#14

Post by hef19898 »

baash05 wrote: post #13

In University I had a prof that gave us 600 facts at the start of the year. All printed and easy to read. Each class we went over a few of them. He said if you mastered 100% you'd get 100% on the exam. He would pick from the lot and that's the exam question. His reasoning was. These are the basics, we were all smart, and we could use the basics to go beyond them. But only if we had them. 20+ years later and I still r…

Sounds like a great prof. Mastering the basics cannot be overstated, if you ask me. Everything else can build upon those basics, worst case it can just be looked up when needed.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#15

Post by quartesixte »

Disclaimer: Anecdata.

I volunteer tutor high school kids in my local community. Particularly math and history. The biggest differentiator between the students who scale up quickly and those who scale up a bit more slowly is their aptitude for memorization.

Recent history curricula and pedagogy in HS has placed an emphasis on “analysis” and “critical thinking.” But the students who struggle all struggle for the same reason: they cannot remember at the moment of writing their paper the basic facts that give context or even give meaning to the documents they are to analyze. I can teach a kid how to do the ACT of analysis to a great level of competency but their papers will be filled with bad analysis and illogical conclusions because they do not know what they read. So, much to their protests, I train them to memorize. And that is often the last push they need to not only get good grades, but realize the joy of critical thinking itself. For now they are not wasting brain cycles trying to conjure up the facts.

Good memorization skills are a huge leverage and it is something that can be learned and practiced. It is a shame that schools are letting children let their mental muscles atrophy like this.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#17

Post by AnonCoward4 »

historia_novae wrote: post #11
turboponyy wrote: post #5

I've never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them. Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn't help but remember them eventually. I'm of the opinion that this leads…

>I'm of the opinion that this leads to a good rule of thumb: never memorize anything Did you ever learn another language? It's impossible without memorizing a massive amount of things, especially when the writing system is different than the one one is familiar with. In fact the most famous researcher in vocabulary learning (Paul Nation) states in one of his book that rote learning is one of the most efficient use of…

For me a language is easier to learn if I can actually use it. For me his rule of thumb is less a rule and more like how my mind works (and to agree all I guess). I can memorize unused facts, but it gets lost in big life changes usually which is really frustrating.

edit: add side note

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#18

Post by quartesixte »

izzygonzalez wrote: post #10

I memorized half of If when I was younger. It seemed especially impressive to certain people. These days I combine mnemonics with memory palace journeys. In a few hours of practice I went from being able to memorize 6 digits to around 70. My penultimate challenge is to memorize texts verbatim. I haven't been able to find a straightforward method. My next thought is to research theater performers' methods and Hafiz me…

The ancients put rhythm to their poems for a reason. It aids memorization of long passages.

But also, text I find is something that resists mnemonic systems. Rote repetition to make the text lived and part of you, to burn into your brain and tongue the very act of saying the words in that specific order seems to rule the day still.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#19

Post by turboponyy »

historia_novae wrote: post #11
turboponyy wrote: post #5

I've never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them. Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn't help but remember them eventually. I'm of the opinion that this leads…

>I'm of the opinion that this leads to a good rule of thumb: never memorize anything Did you ever learn another language? It's impossible without memorizing a massive amount of things, especially when the writing system is different than the one one is familiar with. In fact the most famous researcher in vocabulary learning (Paul Nation) states in one of his book that rote learning is one of the most efficient use of…

I speak two languages, one of which is English. I learned them in my early formational years, so I wouldn't consider myself to have learned them using "active" memorization. I was also conversational in Finnish as a child, though I've since completely forgotten the language.

Learning new languages no doubt involves a lot of memorization no matter which way you look at it, but I think you'd agree that the "active" kind is much more mentally taxing than the passive "immersion" kind, the latter of which I take no issue with. I also don't contend that learning a new language as an adult necessarily involves active rote learning.

I have had to learn other languages at school, including ones with non-Latin writing systems. It did involve a lot of rote learning, which I did to pass the classes, shortly after which I forgot everything. I personally don't value learning new languages, an opinion which I realize might come across as a bit uncultured.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#20

Post by samatman »

This is something I miss from the era when I learned to code: thick books of reference material, designed to be comprehensive. At the time, your compiler was called Superlative Language Number, and you had confidence that as long as you double checked the Number.Subnumber supplement, it would keep working the way the thick stack of paper promised it would.

What you memorize here is the table of contents, and approximately where each answer is inside the book. Search might be better at first but it doesn't scale like logarithmic search over a static pile of paper.

There are programs I can still apply this approach to, vim comes to mind, but for the most part documentation is ambient now, with the leading search engine delivering meaningfully worse results year over year.

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