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Learning to Learn

kevin.the.li

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Re: Learning to Learn

#11

Post by supriyo-biswas »

mc3301 wrote: post #10
dinobones wrote: post #7

I've been wanting to try this approach for learning a language. In English for example, learning the 800 most common words, you can understand 75% of the language: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44569277 . I'd love to start fresh on a new language, take 800 new words, try to learn 10 a day, and see where I get after 3 months. Can I really understand 75% of text if I have perfect recall of those 800 words?

Give learning Japanese a try. It's a meta-learning adventure! There are 3 distinct classes of characters (two syllabaries that each have a perfect matching pair with the other, 46 each plus some compounds) and the third are (mostly) chinese Kanji characters. Fun stuff!

I wonder if there is a similar "Pareto priciple"-esque approach that one could use to learn Japanese.

Re: Learning to Learn

#12

Post by j45 »

dartharva wrote: post #2

This is something I have personally struggled with, so I wish the author elaborated more. If you are a novice, how do you quickly identify what the foundational knowledge is? How do you know what makes you an expert and not an "expert beginner" as the author says to the extent that you can build a personal curriculum about it?

I'm surprised the course by the name of this post isn't here.

The post covers a great mindset, but the math really is one thing, and learning how you learn and how you can learn is invaluable.

This is a great course to start learning about your learning.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

After/with this, there is a slew of adult learning knowledge that will likely make you feel better.

One key is learning to understand something, before learning to memorize it.

Another is creating your own mind map of how the concepts you are learning fits together.

Farnham street has some great books on mental models as well that was recommended to me as helping

An expert is someone who can often explain complex things in very simple ways. being an innocent beginner is one of the best mindsets to cultivate - you learn what you do and don't know pretty quick, and also a sense of known vs unknown, and size and number of unknowns.

Re: Learning to Learn

#13

Post by opan »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #11
mc3301 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give learning Japanese a try. It's a meta-learning adventure! There are 3 distinct classes of characters (two syllabaries that each have a perfect matching pair with the other, 46 each plus some compounds) and the third are (mostly) chinese Kanji characters. Fun stuff!

I wonder if there is a similar "Pareto priciple"-esque approach that one could use to learn Japanese.

There are the "radicals" which can help you to interpret a new kanji, since they're the kanji building blocks.

Re: Learning to Learn

#14

Post by raincole »

dinobones wrote: post #7

I've been wanting to try this approach for learning a language. In English for example, learning the 800 most common words, you can understand 75% of the language: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44569277 . I'd love to start fresh on a new language, take 800 new words, try to learn 10 a day, and see where I get after 3 months. Can I really understand 75% of text if I have perfect recall of those 800 words?

Depending on your definition of "understanding".

If it means you can at least take an educated guess on what a sentence means, then yes.

If it means to understand a sentence like a native speaker does (just slower), then no.

Re: Learning to Learn

#15

Post by keeptrying »

A big hole in this article is that you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must.

Eg: For RL it would be Barto&Sutton book.

Sometimes the best source is not intuitive. Eg: The best way to become a safe driver is to go to performance drivign school - its a bit expensive but they tell you how to sit and stay alert in a car which I have never seen outside of these schools.

One of my most common things nowadays is to ask ChatGPT is to ask to build a curriculum. Creating and understanding what a great curriculum looks like is 20% of the work of understanding a field.

You can LEARN ANYTHING now if you have the time and inclination and elbow grease. Truly nothing is beyond your grasp - NOTHING. Its a magical time.

I'm actually building a tool that will do all this for you and get you started down the learning path faster than what we have now.

And for the curious - the best way to learn medicine is not a textbook. There are solutions out there like Skethcy which work much better for anatomy.

My own learning project - learn Medicine "on the side". It seems ludcirous that we give up the keys to our health to doctors just so we don't have to learn 2 years of courses. Am going to fix that!

Re: Learning to Learn

#16

Post by deafpolygon »

The biggest challenge in learning is identifying gaps in your knowledge. Dunning-Kruger is a real thing and you want to avoid that.

Part of learning to learn, is learning how to identify the things you don't know. Then learning how to structure your 'personal curriculum' them in a rational way - you don't need to know everything up front to be effective.

Re: Learning to Learn

#17

Post by rustcleaner »

xandrius wrote: post #8
dartharva wrote: post #2

This is something I have personally struggled with, so I wish the author elaborated more. If you are a novice, how do you quickly identify what the foundational knowledge is? How do you know what makes you an expert and not an "expert beginner" as the author says to the extent that you can build a personal curriculum about it?

I tried to think about this and came to a personal realisation that perhaps there is no strict "foundational knowledge" for most topics. Pick programming, is knowing binary operations foundational? Is knowing compilers? Is it knowing bubble sort? Or perhaps knowing data structures? I believe that if you have been using/working in a field, whatever you touch for your own goals that's enough. And perhaps the difference…

I'd argue the principles Turing and Wolfram lay out in regards to universal computation and computational equivalence are the most foundational, and then various systems or architectures (flow vs stack, etc), etc, are important as there needs to be concrete examples implementing the fundamentals. If you really want to get esoteric, programming goes all the way back with society and religion. Just like how a machine can compute so too can a group of people through their actions, if they adhere as religiously to their tasks as the fablic of reality seems to adhere to its laws in governing the motions of matter. Programming is the building abstract structures which, when represented with matter in the right ways that can take advantage of the moment-by-moment Gets Things Done™ nature of the fabric of reality itself, produces useful transformations of its initial states. Very complex behavior arises from the simplest of mechanistic rulesets, and it's found universally in biology and in places all over reality. Computation is so foundationally fundamental to this place and your (dear reader) existence here, it is shameful it's not in standard middle/high schools' curricula right next to the fundamental theorems of arithmetic and algebra!

Re: Learning to Learn

#18

Post by cbracketdash »

keeptrying wrote: post #15

A big hole in this article is that you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must. Eg: For RL it would be Barto&Sutton book. Sometimes the best source is not intuitive. Eg: The best way to become a safe driver is to go to performance drivign school - its a bit expensive but they tell you how to sit and stay alert in a car which I have never seen outside of these schools. One of my most comm…

Would love to hear more about your thoughts on learning medicine! Why would you recommend an online program over textbooks?

Re: Learning to Learn

#19

Post by owobeid »

keeptrying wrote: post #15

A big hole in this article is that you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must. Eg: For RL it would be Barto&Sutton book. Sometimes the best source is not intuitive. Eg: The best way to become a safe driver is to go to performance drivign school - its a bit expensive but they tell you how to sit and stay alert in a car which I have never seen outside of these schools. One of my most comm…

> One of my most common things nowadays is to ask ChatGPT is to ask to build a curriculum.

I've been trying to do this for some rabbit hole I decided to go through. It's great for generating a list of topics but good luck getting actual existing books or papers. In some instances it would generate a paper title and link it to some other paper that might be slightly relevant.

Re: Learning to Learn

#20

Post by eacapeisfutuile »

dartharva wrote: post #2

This is something I have personally struggled with, so I wish the author elaborated more. If you are a novice, how do you quickly identify what the foundational knowledge is? How do you know what makes you an expert and not an "expert beginner" as the author says to the extent that you can build a personal curriculum about it?

You don’t. That is what you will build as you learn a topic, it makes no sense to “identify” it first.

Do the thing you want to learn.

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