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This is completely anecdotal, however, I find I don't feel like I absorb any information unless I can apply it to something. With more mathematical topics, I ne

This is completely anecdotal, however, I find I don't feel like I absorb any information unless I can apply it to something. With more mathematical topics, I need to work through problem sets. With literature/history I need to draw parallels to other events. Figuring out how to put information in context is what helps me retain information. It is a struggle because this requires a lot more time and attention than wrote memorization but as with anything there is trade offs.

Ologn 8y ago
Yes. I have been in the industry for a while, and went back to school at night to get my CS Bachelors, and am sometimes surprised at what these young students who want to program and work in the industry do, and what they do not do. Classes happen at a kind of abstract level. I took a Java class, and when the semester ended I wrote a somewhat complex Java program which I wanted to make. I had a semester where I took a graphics and also an AI class. After that semester I started my own AI/ML project which was something of a bust (once I gathered the small amount of data I needed and parsed it, the solutions were obvious without the need for ML techniques). To follow up on the graphics class I worked on a project which used OpenGL to draw things. Also - years later I worked on a project similar to my original project which did not need AI/ML. This project had a lot of data, and did need the use of ML techniques, primarily clustering. Currently I am using mean shift clustering on the data. Some things I have not had time for yet - I learned Common Lisp in a class, and would like to learn more about Common Lisp, Emacs Lisp and Scheme, but have not had the time for it. Some techniques and ideas from class pop into my head when I need to solve something. I had data the usefulness of which faded over time. It occurred to me that the value of the data underwent exponential decay, and I programmed it as such. Or once I need to make a hash and I had the idea to use Gödel numbers, which I did not even know about until a math class. And so on. Also when I need to deal with concurrency and mutual exclusion, I have weeks (months?) of class study about how critical sections and so forth work. Those are rocks many ships have crashed into (including myself, pre-class - and I still avoid it if possible). You get a notion of how the same problem can be solved via different techniques. But maybe one uses self-balanced binary trees and one uses bogosort. You consider big O factors in programs. I have come across at least three programs that had a huge big O algorithm killing the program (although the root cause for one of them was actually mixing up signed and unsigned numbers). If a topic in class interests me, I sometimes go beyond what I need for an A in the class. If we are studying priority scheduling, and the topic interests me, I may spend nights reading books, articles and documentation on how it works. In summary, the answer might be to do more than class asks for. Class can be very abstract. If you feel as you do, bring the abstractness of a class into the concreteness of a real side project.
appleiigs 8y ago
I couldn't find the quote, but there is one where Richard Feynman takes what he reads/hears and visualizes it in his head, then compares any new information to that visualization. This maybe helpful if you can't find a practical application. The mental visualization can be the application... build the thing in your head, watch the data, molecules, money, etc flow around in your visualization. Edit: Original poster mentioned notes, flash cards, wiki... which seem like more of the same - memorization. Without more context, I really think lack of visualization could be an issue here.
- emilga 8y ago
  Do you remember roughly where you read that Feynman quote? (Or was it a video?) I'd be really interested to read it.
  - appleiigs 8y ago
    I couldn't find it because from memory I was googling 'feynman furry'. The keywords are 'feynman "grow hairs"'. From his book called "Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman": "I can't understand anything in general unless I'm carrying along in my mind a specific example and watching it go. Some people think in the beginning that I'm kind of slow and I don't understand the problem, because I ask a lot of these "dumb" questions: "Is a cathode plus or minus? Is an an-ion this way, or that way?" But later, when the guy's in the middle of a bunch of equations, he'll say something and I'll say, "Wait a minute! There’s an error! That can't be right!" The guy looks at his equations, and sure enough, after a while, he finds the mistake and wonders, "How the hell did this guy, who hardly understood at the beginning, find that mistake in the mess of all these equations?" He thinks I'm following the steps mathematically, but that's not what I'm doing. I have the specific, physical example of what he's trying to analyze, and I know from instinct and experience the properties of the thing. So when the equation says it should behave so-and-so, and I know that's the wrong way around, I jump up and say, "Wait! There’s a mistake!" Also from the same book: "I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining something that I'm trying to understand: I keep making up examples. For instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem, and they're all excited. As they're telling me the conditions of the theorem, I construct something which fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set (one ball) – disjoint (two balls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on. Finally they state the theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn't true for my hairy green ball thing, so I say, 'False!'"

Ologn 8y ago

Yes. I have been in the industry for a while, and went back to school at night to get my CS Bachelors, and am sometimes surprised at what these young students who want to program and work in the industry do, and what they do not do. Classes happen at a kind of abstract level. I took a Java class, and when the semester ended I wrote a somewhat complex Java program which I wanted to make. I had a semester where I took a graphics and also an AI class. After that semester I started my own AI/ML project which was something of a bust (once I gathered the small amount of data I needed and parsed it, the solutions were obvious without the need for ML techniques). To follow up on the graphics class I worked on a project which used OpenGL to draw things. Also - years later I worked on a project similar to my original project which did not need AI/ML. This project had a lot of data, and did need the use of ML techniques, primarily clustering. Currently I am using mean shift clustering on the data. Some things I have not had time for yet - I learned Common Lisp in a class, and would like to learn more about Common Lisp, Emacs Lisp and Scheme, but have not had the time for it. Some techniques and ideas from class pop into my head when I need to solve something. I had data the usefulness of which faded over time. It occurred to me that the value of the data underwent exponential decay, and I programmed it as such. Or once I need to make a hash and I had the idea to use Gödel numbers, which I did not even know about until a math class. And so on. Also when I need to deal with concurrency and mutual exclusion, I have weeks (months?) of class study about how critical sections and so forth work. Those are rocks many ships have crashed into (including myself, pre-class - and I still avoid it if possible). You get a notion of how the same problem can be solved via different techniques. But maybe one uses self-balanced binary trees and one uses bogosort. You consider big O factors in programs. I have come across at least three programs that had a huge big O algorithm killing the program (although the root cause for one of them was actually mixing up signed and unsigned numbers). If a topic in class interests me, I sometimes go beyond what I need for an A in the class. If we are studying priority scheduling, and the topic interests me, I may spend nights reading books, articles and documentation on how it works. In summary, the answer might be to do more than class asks for. Class can be very abstract. If you feel as you do, bring the abstractness of a class into the concreteness of a real side project.

appleiigs 8y ago

I couldn't find the quote, but there is one where Richard Feynman takes what he reads/hears and visualizes it in his head, then compares any new information to that visualization. This maybe helpful if you can't find a practical application. The mental visualization can be the application... build the thing in your head, watch the data, molecules, money, etc flow around in your visualization. Edit: Original poster mentioned notes, flash cards, wiki... which seem like more of the same - memorization. Without more context, I really think lack of visualization could be an issue here.

emilga 8y ago
Do you remember roughly where you read that Feynman quote? (Or was it a video?) I'd be really interested to read it.
- appleiigs 8y ago
  I couldn't find it because from memory I was googling 'feynman furry'. The keywords are 'feynman "grow hairs"'. From his book called "Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman": "I can't understand anything in general unless I'm carrying along in my mind a specific example and watching it go. Some people think in the beginning that I'm kind of slow and I don't understand the problem, because I ask a lot of these "dumb" questions: "Is a cathode plus or minus? Is an an-ion this way, or that way?" But later, when the guy's in the middle of a bunch of equations, he'll say something and I'll say, "Wait a minute! There’s an error! That can't be right!" The guy looks at his equations, and sure enough, after a while, he finds the mistake and wonders, "How the hell did this guy, who hardly understood at the beginning, find that mistake in the mess of all these equations?" He thinks I'm following the steps mathematically, but that's not what I'm doing. I have the specific, physical example of what he's trying to analyze, and I know from instinct and experience the properties of the thing. So when the equation says it should behave so-and-so, and I know that's the wrong way around, I jump up and say, "Wait! There’s a mistake!" Also from the same book: "I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining something that I'm trying to understand: I keep making up examples. For instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem, and they're all excited. As they're telling me the conditions of the theorem, I construct something which fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set (one ball) – disjoint (two balls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on. Finally they state the theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn't true for my hairy green ball thing, so I say, 'False!'"