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In Praise of Memorization

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Re: In Praise of Memorization

#61

Post by orzig »

queuep wrote: post #57
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…

> Good memorization skills are a huge leverage and it is something that can be learned and practiced. Any recommendations in how to get better at memorization?

Anki (or similar). Spaced repetition is the most underrated tool I know of. And I barely use it: 8 cards per day, probably 1.5 minutes total with a noticeable bump in ease of professional life

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#62

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#64

Post by Koshkin »

When encountering a new concept (a definition, a theorem) memorization is more important than understanding. Yes, you can spend time trying to crack the meaning, but you won’t unless you spend enough time contemplating examples and trying to imagine counter-examples. It’s a struggle. A more efficient way of gaining understanding is, first, to have things you do not (yet) fully understand memorized to the letter, and then use this to do exercises and solve problems. Only then you can more or less fully appreciate the concept, its raison d'être, and why it is formulated the way it is; no amount of explaining on the part of the instructor can be as helpful as your own practice actually using the thing.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#65

Post by danielbln »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #30
historia_novae wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Curious, I've learned English to a nearly native level without memorizing a single word.

How does one learn a language without committing it to memory (the meaning of memorizing).

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#66

Post by queuep »

orzig wrote: post #61
queuep wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good memorization skills are a huge leverage and it is something that can be learned and practiced. Any recommendations in how to get better at memorization?

Anki (or similar). Spaced repetition is the most underrated tool I know of. And I barely use it: 8 cards per day, probably 1.5 minutes total with a noticeable bump in ease of professional life

Ah.. I thought it was more of so you could practice remembering stuff. Like some people remembers what somebody said in a meeting 3 months ago and some don’t even knew we had a meeting about it

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#68

Post by DonHopkins »

>Many would argue that there is no point for kids to memorize the world map today.

Al Franken can draw the United States map from memory! (He claims it was for a bar bet.)

Al Franken and Tom Davis visit Late Night with David Letterman, 8/20/87. Al draws a map of all 48 contiguous states in under 2 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn2ofGwDd4A

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#69

Post by SamBam »

queuep wrote: post #66
orzig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anki (or similar). Spaced repetition is the most underrated tool I know of. And I barely use it: 8 cards per day, probably 1.5 minutes total with a noticeable bump in ease of professional life

Ah.. I thought it was more of so you could practice remembering stuff. Like some people remembers what somebody said in a meeting 3 months ago and some don’t even knew we had a meeting about it

My understanding is that "learning memorization" is really the process of learning to do the work to memorize, through explicit strategies like spaced repetition.

I don't think people become better at "effortless" memorization. Instead they learn what it is they need to do if they want to remember something.

Re: In Praise of Memorization

#70

Post by SamBam »

lapinot wrote: post #24

Memorization might be a part of it, but imho the important part is (emphasis mine): > So they ended up reading *reference manuals* and writing down or memorizing the answers to their questions because they couldn't look up information very easily. Good reference manuals are dope and they're so much better than tutorials or FAQ like stackoverflow because they are written to be general, you don't have to generalize you…

I'd say that being able to make use of a good reference manual is still the process of learning the basic outline of the material, learning what it is that you know and what it is that is contained in the manual (and what isn't in the manual!), and even learning your way around the manual itself in order to find stuff quickly.

I'd say this skill is very different than never learning any geography because you "could" look it up on Google Maps some day if you wanted to.

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