Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Praise of Memorization

pearlleff.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 152 posts

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#31

Post by rasterino »

bambax wrote: post #28

Very much in agreement with the article. The analysis about the current Ukrainian situation is a little bit limited, though, because Russia controls Sevastopol since it annexed Crimea in 2014; it didn't need the current war to control it more. Also, probable typo: > A second example: at the time of the writing of this article, Russia is a month into an invitation into Ukraine. invitation => invasion? I don't think an…

> Very much in agreement with the article. The analysis about the current Ukrainian situation is a little bit limited, though, because Russia controls Sevastopol since it annexed Crimea in 2014; it didn't need the current war to control it more.

Agree. That was my first thought even when they invaded Crimea.

> invitation => invasion? I don't think anyone invited Russia in Ukraine.

Could be a tongue-in-cheek? I understood that as being said in a sarcastic tone.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#32

Post by jasode »

bambax wrote: post #28

Very much in agreement with the article. The analysis about the current Ukrainian situation is a little bit limited, though, because Russia controls Sevastopol since it annexed Crimea in 2014; it didn't need the current war to control it more. Also, probable typo: > A second example: at the time of the writing of this article, Russia is a month into an invitation into Ukraine. invitation => invasion? I don't think an…

>, because Russia controls Sevastopol since it annexed Crimea in 2014; it didn't need the current war to control it more.

Crimea's fresh water supply came from a canal originating in Ukraine. After Russia's annexation, Ukraine retaliated by blocking the water flow with concrete so Crimea was running out of water. Deep link to explanation: https://youtu.be/If61baWF4GE?t=16m27s

So it was no surprise that on the 2nd day of the invasion, Russian soldiers used explosives to blow up Ukraine's dam to to re-open the canal: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/313jB_tLSxQ

Crimea residents' (many pro-Russian) reaction a week later on March 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBJmnMqH8S4

Also, Russia controlling Ukraine's land and coastline from Donbass through Mariupol and down to north Crimea means they have a more viable "land bridge" for supplies than the tiny man-made bridge that links southern Crimea with Russia. Ukraine becoming allied with NATO (or a defacto "NATO ally" via EU membership instead of a Russia puppet) means that tiny bridge over the Kerch strait becomes a vulnerable chokepoint that threatens Russia. Deep link to that explanation: https://youtu.be/l5KXeFdpyaE?t=7m22s

From Russia's point of view, there are many desirable military objectives for them to take over southeastern Ukraine.

EDIT reply to: >, because a naive look at the map suggests that even without Crimea, Russia already has coastline onto the Black Sea between its borders with Ukraine and Georgia... there must be a strong reason in favour of invading another country rather than developing ports on the land they already have,

Russia's existing coastline with the Black Sea (e.g. Sochi, etc) has no deep water ports that connect to their major navigable rivers. The 2nd video I linked illustrates that. You can also see on the wikipedia diagram that the Russia's existing Black Sea coastline around Sochi doesn't connect to Russia's main river system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Deep_Water_System_of_E...

When Ukraine had pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, the Crimea chokepoint wasn't as big of a threat. With the 2014 regime change to pro-NATO presidents Poroshenko & Zelenskyy, that mindset changed.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#33

Post by [deleted] »

quartesixte wrote: post #15

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 r…

[deleted]

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#34

Post by rolisz »

text_exch wrote: post #2

There was an HN poster a few months ago who claimed that memorizing the Python standard library made him much more productive.

I'm one of those people. I haven't memorized all of the Python standard library, but whenever I run into things that I need to do on a monthly frequency (which is not enough to remember things just by using them), I add them to my Anki deck.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#35

Post by johtso »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #9

Memorizing is a lost art. It breeds understanding, because the symbolic surface makes itself apparent to the mind so readily—and without understanding, the symbolic surface has no grounding. Only once the lines are memorized can you say them with feeling. And, when you know the feeling, you can make up new lines. Understanding and memorization should not be seen as opposites.

This resonates with me and my experience of memorisation in the context of botany. A few years back I started going on urban plant survey walks with my local natural history society. The process of learning and memorising the names of the different plants, and then feeling the patterns start to take shape and the flow of recognition on the following walks was so rewarding. It starts to change the way you see things around you. Rather than just being arbitrary bits of data that you're memorising, names become like markers that amplify the unique aspects (however minuscule) between the different living things that surround us.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#36

Post by Buttons840 »

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…

I avoided memorizing mathematics for a long time, but eventually created some spaced-repetition flash cards about math. I find the math I have memorized gives me something to reason about. While I'm in the shower, for example, I can think about stuff I've memorized and gain deeper insight. The memorized facts are hooks upon which I can hang new knowledge.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#38

Post by worldvoyageur »

quartesixte wrote: post #15

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 r…

Anecdata plus one. My exact experience tutoring high school kids. Some could totally solve the problem, but the inability to remember the basic facts to start with meant getting the wrong answer, despite an impeccable logic trail.

The cost in time to derive basic facts that would have been instantly available had they been memorized also harmed the ability, especially on tests, to get to the end within the time available. 'Drill and kill' has its merits and, if done right, gives the kids a sense of accomplishment and progress.

If you start with the wrong facts, or missing facts, you don't end in the right place.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#39

Post by omnicognate »

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 had a similar view as a kid, driven mostly by the fact that I wasn't very good at memorisation. I found that I could get by in maths without it, eg. deriving the quadratic formula by completing the square rather than memorising it. I didn't value memory much as a tool in maths.

After having studied maths and physics at university and worked as a programmer in a mathematical field for 20 years (and studied much more maths in my spare time), I now see my poor recall as the limiting factor in my abilities in maths. The main reason I don't think I could ever have been a professional mathematician is that I would have reached (and have reached in my own learning as an amateur) a ceiling.

I have maths books that are beloved to me, that I have read multiple times (actively, working with pen and paper as one should) and which I will enjoy again in future. But the concepts in those books do not remain in my mind. I don't reach a point where the structure of basic linear algebra, say, is baked in.

I am good at the problem solving, but maths is an edifice, one people have been building onto for millenia. I explore that edifice, and keep returning to my favourite bits of it, but the portion of that structure that is resident in my mind is, and I think always will be, small. It's a window, and as more comes into it, more slides out. Everybody must have such a window, but I know others have much larger windows than me. And that's fine - I'm a programmer, not a mathematician. But I think it's something I would have benefitted from understanding earlier in my life. Perhaps I would have set about "learning to learn" differently. Rote memorisation and active curation of memories already formed could have benefitted me greatly.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#40

Post by em500 »

I largely agree with the author. Even the quickest internet search is many orders of magnitude slower than recollection from memory. The analogy with retrieving from cache vs RAM / disk / network is probably well known. But we should not go overboard in either direction. Everyone's memory is limited, and there are appropriate uses for both calculations and lookup tables.

Quoth Sherlock Holmes:

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

Post reply on HN