5 ms·
I disagree with 'do not read too fast': Skim all. Skim again the next day. But the third time, get pencil and paper and take notes, and effort. If it's neither
by vinchuco 9y ago
I disagree with 'do not read too fast':
Skim all. Skim again the next day. But the third time, get pencil and paper and take notes, and effort. If it's neither uncomfortable nor exciting, you're doing it wrong.
- smhost 9y agoSo basically take a couple days to understand the material rather than going all in all at once?
- BeetleB 9y agoFew math professors grok a journal paper within a day. One professor told me he strives for a page a day.
- catnaroek 9y agoJust... no. If you actually have to understand it (rather than, say, peer-review it), then make a honest attempt to understand it right from the beginning. For instance, suppose it takes you 30 minutes to skim through a chapter of a math book. Then you've wasted 30 minutes you could've spent understanding the chapter's first section.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoWhat if everyone learns differently?
- criloz2 9y agohaha true, I envy people that just sit down read a book/chapter/article/blog linearly and then comes enlightened, I can't, I need to first Skim almost 90% of the material, and then start again from the bottom, reading the last part and trying to figure out how the first part is connected or are important for understand what is written. I think that people that read it linearly don't miss important info, but I just can't
- catnaroek 9y agoNobody is born knowing how to read effectively. It is a matter of practice and discipline.
- heavenlyblue 9y agoHave you actually read any of the papers? While I tend to agree with you in an ideal situation where you may assume the writer is <probably> good - that is usually not the case with real-life papers. It's not even the writing per se - it's the structure, or omissions instead. I would rather skim first to find which parts I may not be able to grasp right away and to find out if there's any point spending time on this, rather than go on and read the pieces from the citation list.
- catnaroek 9y ago> Have you actually read any of the [emphasis mine] papers? What specific papers are you talking about? TFA doesn't contain a single occurrence of the word “paper”. On the other hand, it contains several occurrences of the word “book”. And, most importantly, it is obviously written for newcomers to mathematics, who for obvious reasons will spend more time reading carefully written books rather than papers written in a rush.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- whatshisface 9y agoThat's true, but there are many situations where you don't know if you really need to understand it until you've skimmed it or otherwise have read enough to know what's in it.
- vinchuco 9y agoContext matters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica