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Effective learning: Rules of formulating knowledge (1999)
- _qua 1y agoIf I hadn't stubbled upon this essay and Anki, I think by way of a Wired article, I'm not sure I would have gotten into or passed medical school. They were eye opening and turned me from an average smart student into a leader of my class. I had planned to keep doing my cards after moving on to fellowship but alas, life gets in the way.
- 8s2ngy 1y agoThat's impressive! Would you mind sharing how you used Anki for your studies?
- pessimizer 1y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/wiki/index
- titanomachy 1y agoYou deserve some credit, though. Setting this up properly takes quite a bit of discipline and persistence. I only did it for certain memorization-heavy classes and I still found it to be kind of a chore. Mostly in college I just tried to understand things deeply and hoped that this kind of understanding/memory would be reasonably durable. That got me good enough grades for what I was trying to do, but it probably would not have been sufficient for a very competitive professional school like medicine.
- _qua 1y agoThat's how I did undergrad. Wasn't even much of a note taker, usually just paid attention during lectures and did the reading. That's not enough for the insane volume of information you have to learn in med school. There are certain subjects like physiology that are very conceptual but even there you need to know quite a bit of detail, and then of course the memorization heavy topics like anatomy, microbiology and others. There's a reason Anki is used so heavily by med students these days.
- greymalik 1y agoIt feels circular. How is learning different from understanding? How is understanding different from knowledge? I’m supposed to understand before I learn. How do I understand if not through learning? I’m supposed to understand to gain knowledge. Isn’t knowledge understanding?
- dleeftink 1y agoEnter: knowledge. It's a messy thing. Before you know it, it 'clicks'. That's the only thing worth chasing.
- brian_spiering 1y agoYou are correct that those concepts are interrelated. It works well not to get caught up in precise definitions. Instead, reflect on your current level and take the next best step.
- volemo 1y agoHow does one walk? To walk one needs to move their foot forward, to move their foot they have to lift it up, to lift a foot up they first have to place it down, and that requires moving it forward. It feels circular! Learning is circular. You do it step by step, one bite at a time: you learn a fact, you understand its connection to other facts you know, you gain a little knowledge, you repeat.
- aDyslecticCrow 1y agoMemorization is part of learning. Memorized knowledge is knowledge. But memorized knowledge isnt understanding. You can fully understand something without being able to recall it perfectly later.
- lemonberry 1y agoNot sure if this will help (or if it's even correct), but Wilfrid Sellars in his essay "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" talks about the difference between "knowing that" to ride a bike one needs to put pressure on the pedals to rotate the tire and move the bicycle and rider forward and "knowing how" to ride a bike. To me the latter is indicative of understanding and the former is information or knowledge.
- sandspar 1y agoIf you've used AI to create flashcards then you've probably encountered many annoyances. For example, AI-created flashcards tend to be too wordy. Share this article with them and ask them to follow the rules. It makes for better flashcards.
- joshdavham 1y agoIf you wanna go deeper, I’d recommend checking out https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SuperMemo_Guru https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SuperMemo_Guru It’s a bit of a treasure trove for us spaced repetition nerds!
- nxobject 1y agoSadly, it seems to (as of 6 hours after parent post) intermittently produce "max connections exceeded" messages :( Poor old hug of death!
- dang 1y agoRelated: Rules of formulating knowledge in learning (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22524122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22524122 - March 2020 (2 comments) Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18404150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18404150 - Nov 2018 (17 comments) Effective learning: Rules of formulating knowledge (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13047576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13047576 - Nov 2016 (35 comments) Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10785221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10785221 - Dec 2015 (1 comment)
- hereme888 1y agoToo bad Piotr Wozniak (inventor of SuperMemo) is such a hermit and uncompromising of his lifestyle choices, that most of his life's work was eventually superseded by open-source solutions (Anki + FSRS). I had tons of material in SuperMemo for years. Gave up and fully switched to Anki. At least I'm thankful for his spaced-repetition algorithms. Also, his articles restored my love for learning and helped me confirm that school was an insane waste of time and resources.
- steve1977 1y agoLast time I checked, Anki was nowhere near SuperMemo in regards to incremental reading features. Especially not with FSRS. SuperMemo is actually almost the only reason I still keep a Windows VM.
- gobr 1y agoDo you use Incremental Reading? I've tried many times but I don't see the point in it, probably never got it. Anki way makes more sense.
- hereme888 1y agoExactly. Incremental reading was touted as some ultimate productivity/pleasure hack but it's impractical for the real world were humans have to synchronize with each other's calendar. It may work for Piotr because he doesn't have a schedule to follow, at all. When I need to read and learn, it needs to happen within a timeframe. Not "some day" when it shows up in my queue again.
- eduFreedom 1y agoWhat you describe fits the 'Plan' feature, not incremental reading. You don't sync with anyone other than your future self... If you have deadlines for certain knowledge, then this can still be managed; it just requires some manual overruling via 'advance' or subset reviews.
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- aDyslecticCrow 1y agoI have notes with me for anything of importance. rule 2 and beyond is of no concern to me. I got through uni on entirely point 1, and only relied on accidental memorization from the process of understanding. I find alot of study advice under-emphasise point 1, and over-emphasise memorization techniques.
- treetalker 1y agoI always thought that point 1 is obvious (don't try to memorize Goethe in the original if you don't understand any German) and that point 2 is where it's at, and what most people underemphasize (learn the material before you try to memorize it). Granted, some types of learning and memorization go hand in hand; but for me the key point is to not try to use SRS to learn the material. Writing and rewriting notes; explaining topics out loud to myself and others; and using information to create something of my own — those are the ways I learn best. And at that point I've naturally memorized a lot already because I've "internalized" it; the spaced recall system becomes more of a repeating task list to remind me to practice recalling what I already learned, right before I would forget it. In that way it's similar to my OmniFocus lists of repeating maintenance tasks and chores, except that the repetition scheme varies with my forgetting curve instead of on a plain daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedule.
- aDyslecticCrow 1y ago> Writing and rewriting notes; explaining topics out loud to myself and others; and using information to create something of my own — those are the ways I learn best. And at that point I've naturally memorized a lot already because I've "internalized" it. Yes precisely. That's generally where i end it. If I've understood the topic well enough to reason about it, rephrase in a compact form, or explain it to someone else, i consider the process done. Doing so during university always made me pass reliably. Flash cards & repeated practice always felt like a cheat to memorize parts i had not sufficiently understood or learnt. Memorization techniques are a great way to pass exams and get grades, but terrible way to learn in the longrun. Any details that would truly require memorization techniques (numbers or large lists of terms) are things i would want to look up to be sure of in the real-world anyway, so why try memorize them. Whenever i look up "study advice" i often see memorization techniques, but very rarely see plain old; "read the book slowly page-by-page, Write down any questions, summarize whenever you feel you understood the section, go back to previous chapters when confused, cross check with other sources or explanations if not sufficient, try practice problems to check if you've understood correctly" This article leans in that direction as-well; 1&2 are mentioned briefly, but encompass the vast majority learning process. All the rest of the points are memorization aids that i would consider footnotes to the learning process at best.
- Mars008 1y agoReimplementing it in 'proper' way with LLM assistance in development and functionality looks like a great project. Hold your breath...