
In Defense of “Mindless Rote” (2001) - rlvesco7
http://nychold.com/akin-rote01.html
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sqrt17
The article shows a confusion between training (committing things to muscle
memory, or to visual patterns that can be recognized or executed) and teaching
(a deeper understanding of a thing). Training is always more testable than
teaching, yet for the most part the things we test people on (e.g.
multiplication of small numbers, solving quadratic equations) are only
evidence that something like mathematical skill and understanding is building
up rather than the desired thing itself.

Rote memorization is a skill that's quite useful, but it's only one skill
among many others that people should take away from school or university. And
just as it's wrong to dismiss certain teaching as "just" rote memorization
(e.g. knowing vocabulary in a foreign language) it's also wrong to just omit
the teaching part altogether and train people to do well on standardized
tests.

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joe_the_user
Even more, it confuses unconsciously learned skills and skills learned by
repetition. Repetition is not always the best or the only way to learn those
skills that get mastered at an unconscious level (though it's definitely an
important way to achieve unconscious mastery at some things). These sorts of
skills often involve physical activity, movement, writing and coordination
generally. If a person begins with "poor form" in such a skill, repeating the
activity only makes the poor form more ingrained.

Alternative method include something directly guiding student physically and
practicing in such a way that you get immediate feedback if you are wrong.

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Gravityloss
Related to Albert Wenger's "attention as the scarce resource" thinking.
[https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2018/06/28/attention-
scarcity/](https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2018/06/28/attention-scarcity/)

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jammygit
A perspective from Wozniak from supermemo:

The core knowledge of intelligent thinking, in mathematics and beyond, is the
rules of mathematical derivation in the most abstract and universally
applicable form. Those rules can be applied in a myriad of daily situations.
This universal applicability in problem solving makes the basis of what others
consider an intelligent person. If properly formulated and represented for
learning, these rules can be memorized in a standard way; in other words,
memorization can be a way toward intelligence!"

[https://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/ks.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/ks.htm)

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ASipos
But... you have to know what a derivative is _for_ in order to be motivated to
learn how to do it. If it's all just mindless manipulation, how will one know
whether to apply this or that mindless manipulation?

~~~
hnuser355
For me it was cause I wanted to beat the shit out of my curve and get
scholarship money and letters for grad school. Similar sentiments are found in
Hardy’s book I think. If you spend enough time around math professors you will
certainly hear a story about so-and-so who is now an acclaimed mathematician
who showed up for some undergraduate course when he was 17 or something
extremely confused about what the “meaning” of the material was but figured
out how to solve all the problems and get an A cause he cared about being good
at it (and had the ability to do so).

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andrewl
I just want to note that the nychold.com site is new to me, and that there's a
lot of interesting stuff there.

