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> What if I also told you that memorising facts is not the same as learning? That is hopefully obvious to anyone that had a decent education. That learning th
by martopix 4y ago
> What if I also told you that memorising facts is not the same as learning?
That is hopefully obvious to anyone that had a decent education.
That learning through teaching works is also obvious to anyone who tried. I didn't know Feynman advocated for this, but I discovered it when I was an undergrad. To prepare for (oral) exams, I would find an empty classroom and repeat proofs and theorems and explain concepts to an imaginary audience. It felt easy and forced me to clarify the logical flow of everything I studied.
Another aspect is when I was giving private lessons to younger students in need of help. This was very cool because I reviewed subjects that I wasn't quite ready to understand when I first studied them. For example when teaching thermodynamics to a guy, that was the first time I really felt I had understood it properly, because by that point I had other tools (statmech).
- tomlue 4y agoI did the same thing! Except I learned the material early and offered to teach fellow students for a math exam. On the math exam, all of the students got the same question wrong in the same way. It seems I taught the material incorrectly. I got called in front of the dean and educated about cheating. In the end, they suggested I don't do this anymore, but did not consider it to be cheating.
- frankc 4y ago> What if I also told you that memorising facts is not the same as learning? It's interesting, I believe this but recently have come to a little bit of a modified conclusion. I might not fully grasp a particular concept, but the brain is clearly a very powerful generalizer. Feeding in facts, even if they aren't fully connected for you yet, can help your brain make that connection. I think the key is to not just accept that I will memorize x, y and z but that i will keep thinking about it as I ingest new data.