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

The Cornell Note-Taking System

lsc.cornell.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 67 posts

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#51

Post by jerf »

ravenstine wrote: post #21
llamaz wrote: post #4

I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important in…

They tried to get us to take Cornell notes back in high school. I think they can work for some people, but I found that it created too much mental overhead. Seemed to turn me into more of a recording device than a mind comprehending a lecture. The note-taking style seems to assume a certain format of lecture, and if a teacher deviates from that then it can be more confusing than simply taking notes without the extra…

In grad school for computer science, after some struggle, I eventually found that the best thing for me was just to not to take notes at all. Just engage with the class maximally, and make sure to do the homework relatively soon after that (maximizing the time between when you cover something in class and practice it with homework, aka, "waiting until the last minute", is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons).

Obviously, my plan doesn't work for everyone, or every class (this is a bad idea for fact-dump classes for me). But certainly after this I tended to look at everyone's list of "things you have to do to succeed in class" more as a menu than a proscription. Still do look at a lot of things that way; you can see it in our industry too, where you can find people telling you just have to use this type of type system or that type of database... yes, thank you for adding to my menu, but I'll examine that for myself, thanks.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#52

Post by neodymiumphish »

I've been in law enforcement for about 5 years now, the first 3 of which were spent entirely on felony-level criminal investigations. They teach a great deal at the federal courses on how to conduct interviews of Suspects, Victims, and Witnesses, but almost nothing is detailed on how to take notes. When I conducted these interviews (especially ones that aren't recorded or when I'm unlikely to have a chance to re-interview someone, such as with Suspects and Victims), I found that I really needed a methodology of note-taking that allowed me to set aside questions to ask when the time was right. For example, if a sexual assault victim is describing the events that led up to the assault, and mentioned that the suspect sent a message from his phone just before doing something else, I would want to know (to the best of her knowledge) what type of phone it was, but I'm not going to stop her in the middle of telling me the story just to ask that question.

Interestingly, I basically started doing something extremely similar to this system (although, apparently backwards). My notes always included a line separating my main notes on the left from my key details and questions on the right, with the right column only about 3" wide. Ordinarily, I would leave 2 or 3 blank lines after each question so I could fill in the answer the interviewee provided and it reminded me to look for any blank space on my notepad before ending an interview (or, in the case of suspects, before asking more direct questions that may lead to suspect to end the interview before I got the chance to get answers to more minor questions). Ofter, my "summary" section would be extremely short and just describe larger timeline changes, like if a report spans multiple days or locations, I would mark the end of one incident in the bottom few lines of the page and jump to a new page to take notes about the next incident.

I'm very curious if this methodology is used by a lot of others as well (especially in law enforcement), or if I just happened to find one with remarkable similarity to Cornell's.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#53

Post by kd5bjo »

DailyHN wrote: post #49
kd5bjo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write the topic of the note on the index line, and store them sorted. If a card connects multiple topics, pick one and make cross-reference cards that point to the topic with the actual note. The act of filing new notes will force you to at least glance at your old ones, which can generate serendipitous mental connections. You'll also see when you have multiple cards covering the same topic, which helps to link dispa…

Yes, filing the notecards is essential. Something I try to do is keep my physical notecard files small. Besides the inbox file, urgent and important notecards are the only ones I keep in a physical file. It's surprising how fast you can go through a thousand notecards. So effective filing is a must. And for me, that means maintaining digital archives. Something that, on its own, is a whole topic for discussion. Once…

GTD's a wonderful system for keeping track of things you should be doing, but I find his filing system for everything else to be a bit lacking. I've supplemented it with ideas from The Card Index System¹, traditional library card catalogs, and Umberto Eco's recommendations in How to Write a Thesis. At the moment, my card index fills most of my center desk drawer. It may outgrow that soon, but I have no intention of culling it down; it's quite literally an index into my own memories, to help me remember things.

¹ https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216804/page/n7

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#54

Post by sakras »

They made us on several different occasions take Cornell notes saying they'd help us learn. Supposedly there were numerous studies saying that students that used them succeeded. I HATED taking these notes - it just makes more sense to me to format things as a textbook-writer would. I think of my notebooks as mini-textbooks.

On a more general note, I've noticed throughout my undergrad experience that whenever some lecturer/Professor/TA comes up and says they read a study about "evidence-based learning" and that this method will help us learn 10x better, they're full of shit. I want nothing more than to take notes however I want, to a lecture.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#55

Post by arh68 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #17
KomradeKeeks wrote: post #2

'15 here I remember having these notes ingrained into my brain in middle school; at Ithaca, I didn't know a single person who actively used Cornell notes for note taking. That said, actively engaging and re-engaging with content will help you build better internal bodies of knowledge on the subject, so you'll retain the content long after prelims and finals.

Same here. Ithaca schools are just soooo proud of the Cornell note taking system they taught it to us as if it was eternal and essential, but ultimately useless, just like cursive. I also went to Cornell and never saw it used or mentioned once.

Same! '11, never saw a single person use it. Old prelims > graded psets > notes, to me anyways.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#56

Post by pfranz »

dogweather wrote: post #40
atoav wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see a contradiction there. As you said: differnt people learn in different ways. Just speaking for myself, but I can concentrate more if I take notes and not less (unless the thing is very visual in nature).

> differnt people learn in different ways. There's something intuitive about that, but I think the data show the opposite. We all learn the same way. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/learning-...

I wish to see more research on stuff like this. I believe I've seen similar studies showing different learning styles were more effective depending on the topic, not the person.

In my experience, a lot of learning is a back and forth between rote memorization (like vocabulary) and building concepts/associations. Rote memorization can also be a lookup table to focus on higher-level concepts--like memorizing your times tables. Spaced repetition (like Anki) focuses on rote memorization. Lectures and note taking, like this, are a mix focusing on concept building while homework is both generally focusing more on rote memorization.

But there is some difference person-to-person. For example, many people I know work through things by talking out loud. I struggle with this and feel like I have to ruminate on my own to flesh out ideas.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#57

Post by DailyHN »

kd5bjo wrote: post #53
DailyHN wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, filing the notecards is essential. Something I try to do is keep my physical notecard files small. Besides the inbox file, urgent and important notecards are the only ones I keep in a physical file. It's surprising how fast you can go through a thousand notecards. So effective filing is a must. And for me, that means maintaining digital archives. Something that, on its own, is a whole topic for discussion. Once…

GTD's a wonderful system for keeping track of things you should be doing, but I find his filing system for everything else to be a bit lacking. I've supplemented it with ideas from The Card Index System ¹, traditional library card catalogs, and Umberto Eco's recommendations in How to Write a Thesis . At the moment, my card index fills most of my center desk drawer. It may outgrow that soon, but I have no intention of…

Yes, I agree that GTD isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

David Allen, in GTD, recommends an alphabetized system. Something that I don't do because all of my reference material is digitized and easily searchable.

Search-ability is the primary reason I avoid keeping a large physical file system.

I take inspiration from multiple books written about productivity and organization. Other books that have been highly influential in my systems are:

- Principles (Dalio)

- The ONE Thing (Keller)

- Organize Tomorrow Today (Selk, Bartow)

- Productivity Planner (more of a journal than a book)

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#58

Post by filesystem »

dogweather wrote: post #40
atoav wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see a contradiction there. As you said: differnt people learn in different ways. Just speaking for myself, but I can concentrate more if I take notes and not less (unless the thing is very visual in nature).

> differnt people learn in different ways. There's something intuitive about that, but I think the data show the opposite. We all learn the same way. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/learning-...

"We all learn the same" is not the correct conclusion to draw from this report. The only thing this report claims is that all existing studies about differing learning styles are flawed and therefore not reliable.

The actual conclusion, straight from the source you linked:

"But psychological research has not found that people learn differently, at least not in the ways learning-styles proponents claim."

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#59

Post by sukilot »

ravenstine wrote: post #21
llamaz wrote: post #4

I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important in…

They tried to get us to take Cornell notes back in high school. I think they can work for some people, but I found that it created too much mental overhead. Seemed to turn me into more of a recording device than a mind comprehending a lecture. The note-taking style seems to assume a certain format of lecture, and if a teacher deviates from that then it can be more confusing than simply taking notes without the extra…

Thorough note-taking from a live stream is only appropriate when it's impossible to record.

In school, thorough note-taking during lecture is a terrible idea. Only jot down your own questions to follow up on later; don't copy the material. Record the material and replay it later to review.

Note-talking "offline", at your own pace, from a book or a recording, is a great way to build your memory of the material.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#60

Post by sukilot »

dogweather wrote: post #40
atoav wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see a contradiction there. As you said: differnt people learn in different ways. Just speaking for myself, but I can concentrate more if I take notes and not less (unless the thing is very visual in nature).

> differnt people learn in different ways. There's something intuitive about that, but I think the data show the opposite. We all learn the same way. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/learning-...

That's not what your link says. The link says no one is a pure visual or auditory learner.
Post reply on HN