

"Don't just read it; fight it" - jsomers
http://jsomers.net/blog/kenjitsu

======
michael_nielsen
Mortimer Adler wrote a wonderful book about reading, "How to Read a Book",
that's still in print after 70 years. It changed my life by transforming my
view of reading, and, consequently, how I read. It's like a very souped up
version of this blog post. Link: [http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-
Touchstone-book/dp/06712...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Touchstone-
book/dp/0671212095)

~~~
olliesaunders
I'm reading that right now. Well, I say reading, I really mean ignoring on my
bedside-table. I did read some and now I don't want to subject myself to the
boredom again. Although I can certainly confirm that it is full of
good—possibly very good—information.

------
GavinB
When you start writing your own novel, this is exactly what happens. You start
to read other novels with a new awareness of what the author is doing in terms
of word choice, pacing, and explication. You read with an eye to how you would
have done it--and are often shocked when you realize how much of the craft of
writing you were previously just skimming through.

~~~
katovatzschyn
If a novel is not worth reading slowly, it is not worth reading. Most of the
time.

------
praptak
While I agree with the gist of the article, I find the following piece of
advice counterproductive, especially when applied to math texts: "Read at the
speed of understanding—don’t disengage from the hard stuff just to finish an
article. When you start to glaze, or skim, or you feel like you’re just sort
of scanning over the forms of words, reboot."

My advice is quite the opposite: do not try to understand the article left-to-
right, top-to-bottom. Skim (omitting the hard parts) as many times as
necessary to get the general ideas and only then attack the hard parts.

~~~
realitygrill
Halmos talks a lot about learning tactics in the book.. he's an enthusiastic
supporter of the Moore method, too.

"I wish I had read the first 10 pages of many more books -- a splendid
mathematical education can be acquired that way."

"Another way I keep active as I read is by changing the notation; if there is
nothing else I can do, I can at least change (improve?) the choice of letters.
Some of my friends think that's silly, but it works for me... Finally, a small
point, but one with some psychological validity: as I keep changing the
notation to my own, I get a feeling of being creative, tiny but non-zero..."

And the part that reminded me of your advice:

"Learning a language is different from learning a mathematical subject; in one
the problem is to acquire a habit, in the other to understand a structure. The
difference has some important implications. In learning a language from a
textbook, you might as well go through the book as it stands and work all the
exercises in it; what matters is to keep practising the use of the language.
If, however, you want to learn group theory, it is not a good idea to open a
book on page 1 and read it, working all the problems in order, till you come
to the last page. It's a bad idea. The material is arranged in the book so
that its linear reading is logically defensible, to be sure, but we readers
are human, all different from one another and from the author, and each of us
is likely to find something difficult that is easy for someone else. My advice
is to read till you come to a definition new to you, and then stop and try to
think of examples and non-examples, or till you come to a theorem new to you,
and then stop and try to understand it and prove it for yourself -- and, most
important, when you come to an obstacle, a mysterious passage, an unsolvable
problem, just skip it. Jump ahead, try the next problem, turn the page, go to
the next chapter, or even abandon the book and start another one. Books may be
linearly ordered, but our minds are not."

------
tpyo
Seems Feynman had an excellent father, seeing from the interviews I have seen
with him.

------
lesterbuck
This reminds me of the Zen proverb that I ran across a few months ago, and now
have pasted on the wall above my desk:

"To know and not to do is not yet to know."

There is something very real in the action taken from knowledge that looks so
minor in foresight, and is so huge in hindsight. Like Goethe's famous quote
about the power of action.

There is also the book "The Knowing-Doing Gap", which takes this idea into the
organizational context.

------
yarapavan
Summary: Expanding on Paul Halmos quote:

*Don’t just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?

------
realitygrill
This quote is from Halmos' "automathography", _I Want To Be A Mathematician_.
I loved reading this book (though I'm no mathematician).

[http://www.amazon.com/I-Want-Be-Mathematician-
Automathograph...](http://www.amazon.com/I-Want-Be-Mathematician-
Automathography/dp/0387960783)

------
gnubardt
I think it's important not to confuse #3 ( _Think like Feynman...Imagine
actively. Use the phrase “that would mean…” to force yourself to think on your
own terms with your own vivid images._ ) with over analogizing.

Thinking about a concept creatively to see a different view is great but only
understanding something as something else can prevent one from deeply
understanding the concept. Even if one begins to comprehend a concept through
analogy I think it's important to eventually think beyond it, and see
"through" the analogy to the deeper meaning. Think of leaky abstractions.

------
Panoramix
Nice post. I agree with the sentiment, but I'm afraid that it's not really
possible to "fight" with everything you read (mostly due to time constraints).
I couldn't agree more with the "explain stuff" bit. I have found deep gaps in
my knowledge while explaining stuff to others (or found new angles to attack a
problem, etc). It's almost as much about teaching others as it's about
learning.

~~~
jurjenh
I think it is possible to "fight" everything you read, you'd end up reading
much less, but would likely know (as in _understand_ ) more. The challenge
lies in sourcing the material you'd like to digest - so you should revisit
your goals every time you start to uncover some new understanding.

I know that I've been on an information skimming trip, and although I feel
that I have enlarged my impression of the world considerably, my actual
knowledge of the world has only grown marginally - along the lines of
confirming intuitions, and occasionally challenging preconceptions I've had.

------
julius_geezer
Having recently read _The Age of Wonder_, about British science in its overlap
with the Romantic period in literature, I have to say that a lot of authors
and publishers seem to imagine that _any_ book will be read with the attention
commonly given to popular fiction--not much. Lots and lots of sloppy stuff.

------
derefr
Does this apply to fiction that one would otherwise be reading for escapism?
Or would "fighting it" kill it, in that case?

------
godDLL
The gist: musings on the scientific methodology, curiosity, and generally
mindful approach to life, work, and play.

------
greenlblue
Points 4 and 6 are pretty good.

