
Effective learning: Rules of formulating knowledge (1999) - misiti3780
https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules
======
guizzmo
The first rule "do not learn what you do not understand" is nonesense in the
context of learning mathematics/physics/hard sciences.

If you understand a subject, then it means that you have learned it
effectively.

In my experience with teaching at university, I have found that the wish of
students to understand before learning is actually a great barrier to
comprehend a subject.

In order to build intuition on a subject, a student should first try to apply
it, play with it (without understanding it) and then understanding will come.
But I have yet to witness a student which understand a subject without being
able to use/apply the subject.

Take the notion of electric field. You could try to understand it before
learning how to use it. Good luck. You are not a fish, so you probably have no
sensors of electric field on your skin, and thus you have no prior notion to
cling to. I contend that it is virtually impossible. Or you could try to use
the concept of electric field to compute forces on charged particle, or
compute the electric field created by a charge, or you could build a program
that represent the electric field in space. Doing this requires no
understanding, just boring substitutions in the definition of the electric
field. But doing that forces you to build understanding (its a vector, it
changes direction with the sign of the charges, etc, etc)

Another example is understanding how to bike. You could try to understand how
balancing on a bike so that it stay upright, understand how moving the
handlebar right makes you turn left or, you could just try to bike, and then
understand how it works out.

So my advice: don't try to understand. Do, and do again untill you have
learned. Not the other way around.

~~~
MrQuincle
As a kid I cried at times because learning foreign words, lists of topological
places, or events in history was so hard! If I don't get the structure or
context I am so lost.

At electrical engineering they still tried to teach me in the same way. Giving
me assignments with little context. What saved me in the end were textbooks
and the internet.

The easiest way for me to understand new concepts are the subsequent
generalizations or extremes. Complex numbers? Quaternions. Gradients? Clifford
algebra. Sets? Categories. Fourier transform? Wavelets.

Sure there might be people who benefit from solving the puzzles from their
teachers, but it assumes that every mind works the same way.

~~~
groovy2shoes
I'm the same way. At university, I had an instructor for Calculus I who seemed
content with just having us memorize formulas and identities and "shortcuts",
only to regurgitate them on demand. I _barely_ passed with a C-. Then, I had
an instructor for Calculus II who was much the same. I made a D+ in Calc II,
which, since Calculus I-III are considered essential courses for engineering
students, was not passing. My _second_ time through Calc II, I _barely_ passed
with a C-.

Then, I get to Calculus III, and my instructor introduces each concept by
showing us a complicated-but-ultimately-intuitive formula for something, then
deriving the "shortcut" step-by-step. While most of the students griped that
it was boring, I found it quite interesting, and for the first time in my
university career I felt like I could _grasp_ calculus. I made an A-.

There are other instances of this, as well, but that one was probably the most
dramatic. I don't know what it is. I came up with a handful of analogies just
now, but none of them seemed particularly satisfying, so I gave up. Perhaps
it's just a quirk, I dunno :)

~~~
pasbesoin
Calc I, I had the "hard" professor ("Oh, you have A.? Sorry."). I found he was
_challenging_ , but also a _good_ instructor. A.

Calc II, I had a guest/evaluation professor. Disorganized. Poor descriptions.
No context. I really struggled with that class.

They didn't renew the Calc II professor's contract. But the damage was done,
for my class.

------
nomurrcy
I've been using Anki for the past year while learning German and it has been
(seemingly) very helpful. I doubt I would have acquired the vocabulary I have
in the past year without it. I'm not sure if this is simply due the fact that
it helps make studying a habit or that SRS is as beneficial as claimed.

I have found it useful enough that I'm extending its use to other subjects I'm
interested in.

Has anybody used Anki and Supermemo have thoughts on the two? I've never used
supermemo - would be very interested to hear if it is worth looking into vs
Anki for any reason.

~~~
cle
SuperMemo has a lot more advanced features (e.g. incremental reading). But the
tradeoffs are pretty significant, in my opinion. Anki's decisive features for
me are its mobile apps, its simplicity, and its open source license.

I've been using Anki for 5 years now and have about 10,000 notes. I don't use
it for foreign language learning. I would not feel comfortable investing that
much effort into a closed-source platform effectively run by one person
(Piotr). Also, thanks to Anki being open source, I've written a handful of
simple plugins for myself.

~~~
emilga
How are you able to keep 10000 notes in Anki organized? With that many notes,
how can you tell whether something you want to remember is already in your
notes or not?

It seems to me that the Anki card browser is quite bad at this, but maybe I'm
just bad at using it!

~~~
Eerie
1\. Anki has search, tags and hierarchical organization.

2\. If you don't remember that you already have something, it means Anki is
failing you, because the whole point of it is to help you remember.

3\. BUT! it doesn't really matter if you add the same note several times, it
will just make it appear for review more often.

~~~
iheartmemcache
It seems like the value of the platform is in the well-classified data made by
the community in the same way that emacs "killer feature" is the bazillions of
community .el extensions. Is there a Github or some defacto standardized way
people publish their Anki notes?

~~~
emilga
Yes, check out:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/)

------
rdslw
If you're wondering if it's (supermemo) worth your time, let me share with you
my 10 (ten) years supermeme learning conclusions.

I got supermemo advanced english course (20k phrases) around 2004 as a present
and started it in 2005. Initially I thought it will take 2..4 years. Exactly
10 years later, on September 2015 I was at 19k. I reached last 20k phrase (but
not finished the course) around spring 2016. I ended doing it in August 2016.
I learned every day around 10..15 minutes. During those 10 years I had around
3 breaks of 2..4 weeks each which of course resulted in huge amount to
material to rehearse after the break. I had multiple one day slips.

My conclusions:

* I would did it again!!

* It was tough and I was thinking of stopping multiple times

* The biggest thing I got is grit (will power) strengthening - I didnt expect it, and IT IS GREAT

* Of course better english command came also with the course :)

* It impacted (in subtle) ways my approach to learning, which I see much better now with implementing on my own repeating strategies on every possible area

* Use supermemo mobile apps (it was not possible in 2005)

* For foreign languages, db with sound is ultra worthy - I picked up much better pronounciation on the way, while didnt expect it.

Ask me if you want to know more.

Trivia: I had to have virtualbox VM with old windows xp on my every laptop,
just to have supermemo installed and available there :)

~~~
mbrookes
This is not a dig at the parent - they clearly have commitment and drive, but
since they're promoting SuperMemo rather than commenting on the post, let me
just say that this:

 _" I would did it again!!"_

or this:

 _" Of course better english command came also with the course"_

(among a choice of several examples) should tell you everything you need to
know about the effectiveness of SuperMemo after 10 years of learning.

~~~
versteegen
But 12.5 minutes a day for 10 years is only 761 hours. The purpose of
SuperMemo is to optimise for total time spent. (Of course, the specific
course/material might not have been the most effective.)

But I guess that argument doesn't hold water, since rdslw is surely also
exposed to a lot of other material in English.

~~~
rdslw
For sure I was.

And yes, this specific course rather wasn't the most effective one (but
probably best at that time). There were multiple problems with this supermemo
db: many simple phrases I already knew, but also lot of words you never use
(afterwards). Also the biggest problem were circular errors (as I called
them): A>B but also A>C or B>D, where my brain was struggling with one
knowledge fact replacing the other one and again..

------
yowlingcat
Am I the only one that gets nostalgic for university while reading this? Ah, I
think back to university many years ago and it almost makes me a little sad. A
time when I spent so much of my time learning that these techniques would come
in handy. My brain felt so much more limber at that period. I am certainly
faster and productive now at my craft, and am very happy with that. But, oh,
to be a student again...

------
punnerud
Skip to the end and read the summary first

~~~
abathingpape
It makes me wonder if summaries should come first in web articles.

~~~
atsaloli
On a related note, Romans wrote sums at the top of a stack of numbers they
were adding.
[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Sum)

Summaries at the top, always.

------
jyriand
I don't like rules. 20 rules to effective learning, 50 rules to great success
in life etc. You see those articles everywhere. Nobody can memorize those
20-50 rules; more often than not, too many rules will hide the important ideas
that might be hidden in one of those points. Instead of rules I would like to
see principles that are extracted out of these rules.

------
lolive
I use Twitter as a reminder of all the good things I read on the Web.
Basically i use it like the "Star" feature of (good old) Google Reader. Is
there a way to convert my tweets into flashcards? So i can keep in memory all
the good things I met of the Web ?

------
Demcox
This was posted in 1999..... Still relevant but those screenshots were...old.

------
mbrookes
Could we get a [1999] in the title please?

