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The space repetition apps I have use doesn't have a similar concept of interrelationship. For example it's possible for you to learn the flashcards for "three"

by kiba 7y ago

The space repetition apps I have use doesn't have a similar concept of interrelationship. For example it's possible for you to learn the flashcards for "three" and "one" but not know the word for "two". This is insane way of doing things. You are just refreshing random isolated nodes. Not only does it make it a lot harder to learn (since random out of order information is harder to compress), the knowledge graph you build is a tangled mess that's not as usable and doesn't degrade gracefully. I found it helpful to break content down into constituent parts, but also to make cards unify those constituent parts. So, there will be cards about individual facts, but also cards that relate those individual facts. And eventually cards that related the cards that related the cards that related the individual facts. Also, I cemented my understanding and intuition of the Unit Circle using this approach.

jacobolus 7y ago
> Also, I cemented my understanding and intuition of the Unit Circle using this approach. What do you need to do to “cement understanding and intuition of the unit circle”? The common diagrams shown in high school trigonometry courses – e.g. https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/43200/43215/unit-circle7_43215_md.gif https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/43200/43215/unit-circle7_43215_m... – basically involve only 2 meaningful facts: a rhombus made of two equilateral triangles has a long diagonal with squared length of 3, and a square has a diagonal with a squared length of 2. (a) These are fairly easy to figure out, and once understood are quite easy to remember, and (b) all of the derived factoids are pretty much trivial. Students are typically taught this material in a quite terrible way, unfortunately.
- kiba 7y ago
  I memorized the facts and then was able to figure out the relationships after the fact. That may be a brute force way of doing it, but it works for me.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    My point is that there’s very little there. People shouldn’t need to go to extensive effort or need a special system or method to learn 2 simple facts. Taking a simple thing and wrapping it in a big pile of obfuscation is a poor way to teach/learn. (That this is taught this way is not the fault of students.)

by kiba 7y ago

jacobolus 7y ago

> Also, I cemented my understanding and intuition of the Unit Circle using this approach. What do you need to do to “cement understanding and intuition of the unit circle”? The common diagrams shown in high school trigonometry courses – e.g. https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/43200/43215/unit-circle7_43215_md.gif https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/43200/43215/unit-circle7_43215_m... – basically involve only 2 meaningful facts: a rhombus made of two equilateral triangles has a long diagonal with squared length of 3, and a square has a diagonal with a squared length of 2. (a) These are fairly easy to figure out, and once understood are quite easy to remember, and (b) all of the derived factoids are pretty much trivial. Students are typically taught this material in a quite terrible way, unfortunately.

kiba 7y ago
I memorized the facts and then was able to figure out the relationships after the fact. That may be a brute force way of doing it, but it works for me.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  My point is that there’s very little there. People shouldn’t need to go to extensive effort or need a special system or method to learn 2 simple facts. Taking a simple thing and wrapping it in a big pile of obfuscation is a poor way to teach/learn. (That this is taught this way is not the fault of students.)