
Close the Book. Recall. Write It Down (2009) - Tomte
http://chronicle.com/article/Close-the-Book-Recall-Write/31819
======
aryehof
I've always found it particularly useful when learning from a source, to write
down questions that go to the heart of the matter being presented, rather than
just summary notes.

If one later writes answers to the questions, it highlights what one doesn't
understand, what one needs to relearn, and how to explain it to oneself and
others. It then becomes valuable in the future when needing to review and test
key concepts.

I think this is somewhat in line with the ideas presented in this article.

~~~
theGimp
That sounds like a great strategy. Thanks for sharing it.

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Theodores
I find it interesting to see how people note take, if at all. I did one of
those degree courses where note taking was what you did, continually. Then you
re-read your notes and wrote them up properly, then you used those notes to
complete the assignment. So for me note-taking is baked in, it is what I do.

I find it odd working with people that do not even use or own a pen, never
mind a paper notepad. What I find odd is hen talking through a process or
problem I am the one doing the 'napkin sketches' with the no-note people being
'mute' as far as sketching diagrams is concerned.

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scrapcode
I find myself doing something similar while learning a new lang / framework.
For example, I'll watch a pluralsight video, then challenge myself to see how
far I can get from a blank directory to a working blogging app without getting
stuck (too much). When I do get stuck, I'll refer back and catch the minor
details I might have missed trying to copy the code, etc.

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DenisM
Incidentally, I find the biggest value of writing code comments is a deeper
understanding of the problem at hand. The more verbose, the better. As I keep
writing and rewriting descriptions for various warts of the implementation, I
start outlining how to fix them in the future, and as each new iteration
writes itself, the problem becomes clearer. And then, before I know it, a
proper solution emerges, one that is free of warts and without a dire need of
being explained in details. Once the problem is rectified, the comment gets
retired, as it has served its purpose.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I've been solo coding a lot lately, after doing a lot of pair programming
professionally. I find keeping a diary is incredibly important. I just ramble
through whatever I'm sorting out until I feel like I either can get back to
coding, or have enough food for thought to go out and ponder on a walk.

~~~
DenisM
I did my best engineering work when I was working all by myself, far out.
However the calibration of the sense of where to direct my efforts went
completely out of whack in about 7 month. I have coded two beatific systems in
the next 6 months after that, but none of my users cared enough, or even had
the opportunity to appreciate it.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Yeah, I have a very specific real-world goal I am trying to fulfill, so that
helps me aim.

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ciconia
A related method of studying is copying a text. This was actually the way
music composition was taught at the time of Bach. A student would take
manuscripts of the master and copy them, thus internalising the rudiments. In
my personal experience this works much better than studying the dry rules of
counterpoint.

~~~
jimhefferon
It has been my experience teaching college math that there is a strong
correlation between doing well and taking notes. Many students believe (and
the people who give ed tech workshops strongly encourage this view) that they
should just sit back, because they will get the beamer slides later, or watch
the online videos.

And taking a picture of the board with their smartphone, rather than writing
out what is written there, seems to me to be a quite good predictor of having
trouble.

What they are doing is logical but experience shows that for many students it
is not as effective as actively writing the material.

~~~
jacobolus
> _strong correlation between doing well and taking notes. Many students
> believe [...] that they should just sit back,_

The important thing is not to take notes per se, but to make sure to engage
with the lecture and focus, and fully follow the mathematical argument being
presented. Personally I pay attention much better without writing notes, but I
know other people who pay attention best while drawing unrelated doodles, or
by writing down everything that goes on the chalkboard. If I try to write
everything down, the action of mechanical symbol copying takes up brain cycles
and prevents me from thinking about what I’m hearing/reading.

The “strong correlation” you noticed is because taking notes is a clear signal
that the student was paying attention at least enough to write something down.
However, you’re looking at a symptom rather than the root cause of the
problem. For those students who don’t take notes, some of them might be fully
mentally engaged, and others might be daydreaming or checking facebook on
their phones. Of course this group is going to do less well on average than
the note-taker group when you lump them all together.

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golergka
That seems really strange, as the best way to remember learning material I
know is to use it to solve some task that looks like something you'll actually
will likely to do on the job.

Because if you ain't gonna use it, why learn it?

~~~
DenisM
Which exercise would you propose for War and Peace?

I'm not trying to be snarky, I actually search for an answer.

~~~
golergka
When I read it, I was around 14, and it really helped me with creative writing
and history lessons in school.

~~~
DenisM
Sure, but it's more a long-term benefit than an immediate exercise. Had you
read it right now, what would you do make sure to get the most out of it?
Would you sit down and write an essay about a related topic?

This question keeps bugging me. I know what to do about a programming or a
self-development book, but humanities are much harder in that regard.

~~~
golergka
Why would I read it in the first place? That's the question you would have to
answer to understand it.

Right now I'm reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and constantly stop to write
down scenario ideas based on what he's describing. Of course, I also look up a
lot of modern historical research on the matter — so I use recently acquired
knowledge to understand related stuff and read about the same things from
different sources. I also read comic books, having just finished the original
Ghost in the Shell about 2 minutes before starting to write this comment;
during the last week, I've set up animated-interactive-comic engine protorype
in Unity3d and have been experimenting with primitive compositions that would
work well both as game cameras and frozen comic panels.

If you want to read and remember something in the first place, you must have
motivation. And creation and curiosity are the best kind.

Oh, and I know for a fact that I won't remember a lot of roman history a year
later, and that's ok: I only want to remember staff that I actually find
interesting.

~~~
DenisM
I read it for the long term benefits - better command of the language,
appreciation of the historical context, understandig human nature as described
by the author, trained ability to focus on a long form (and thus a long,
elaborate thought), a cultural context that I can refer to in a conversation.

There's a bit of a gap between the long term benefits and immediate actionable
exercise.

Perhaps you are correct, and if I take each one of the benefits individually I
can come up with an exercise that drives the point home. It seems like a
daunting task though...

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jonsen
Professors make the subject of study their profession of exercise. That's not
at all their assignment in lectures. It is to help the students pursue the
profession of the subject. The professor's profession of exercise in class is
pedagogy. As this article clearly describes, most professors are in fact
deeply incompetent.

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bewe42
Combine this method with trying to solve a problem with your own ideas before
even opening a book. This works especially well in some areas of programming,
for example algorithms. After having done this, I can compare my own ideas
with the ones presented in the book.

~~~
rikibro
Yes.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10513291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10513291)

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rogeryu
In university I learnt about the PQRST method:

1) Preview - browse through the text or chapter quickly. 2) Question - think
about what this text is about. 3) Read. 4) Summary - make a summary. 6) Test.

This method actually was promoted in a psychology book about memory and
memorizing. So not only did they teach about how memory works, but they gave
tips how to memorize that, and on top of that they set up the complete book
(which was about more than memory) that way. So the chapters in the book had
some kind of "preview", a short intro about what the chapter was about, a
summary and some test questions, with many pictures and side notes that kept
you going.

~~~
jacobolus
Most textbooks aimed at schoolchildren (from first grade through college) have
this kind of format built into them. Personally I found them patronizing and
tedious to read, as they take 3x more space than necessary to make their
point, and lots of the little called out side notes seemed irrelevant. This
format is almost always the product of some kind of committee process rather
than a primary author with a strong voice.

Just because it’s more effective for someone to {quickly skim, think a bit,
read the chapter, then think a bit more} doesn’t mean that including those
features explicitly in the text is helpful; it’s like taking a full meal and
blending it into a smoothie, so the eater doesn’t need to chew. Some students
will skip the main text and just read the summary bits, assuming (usually
correctly) that that will suffice to pass the next quiz. Others will try to
read the book but be distracted by the disjointed presentation and lose track
of the shape of the arguments. Students who get used to this format will be
completely lost once they hit harder material which hasn’t predigested
everything up front. Many of the better students who are used to real books
will find the format patronizing.

~~~
tamana
It is easier to skip over extra material than to imagine missing material.
Textbooks serve a diverse audience.

Also, it is possibly that the egotistical reader doesn't actually know better
than the author.

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princeb
rote learning is incredibly powerful. it's one thing to understand what you
need to do, and it's something else to have it at the tip of your fingers all
the time.

some of my friends in the fuzzy field - policy making, legal - have such
impressive recall when framing problems and solutions that right away they are
already thinking of the knock on effects of various solutions several levels
deeper.

~~~
imron
_rote learning is incredibly powerful_

It really is. I had very similar experience with learning Chinese.

At first I was all about trying to learn smarter and avoiding the 'outdated'
techniques such as rote learning, but several years in I started doing some
drills to push my level forward and found that rote learning, and in
particular making sure to use active recall rather than passive recall helped
immensely.

Of course you also need to have deeper thinking and learning going on, but as
you mentioned, with rote learning and memorisation all the basics become
instantly available at your fingertips and you can expend your mental energy
on more productive thought processes.

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Anthony-G
I find it beneficial to answer questions on Stack Exchange sites relating to a
topic that I’ve recently learned or worked on. It’s particularly useful for
reinforcing knowledge of subjects that I might have learned a month ago – but
which has already started to fade from memory.

I also like books that have questions at the end of each section or chapter.
As the original article states, it’s easy for the reader to mislead themselves
into thinking that they’re familiar with the subject area while reading – or
re-reading – the text. It’s not until they’ve finished reading and attempt to
answer questions that they know how well they’ve actually retained the
material.

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lilcarlyung
How important is it really to be able to recall information using ones long-
term memory these days though? With my phone I pretty much have access to all
the information in the world from one single place, from almost anywhere in
the western world. Why would I want to memorize most of it? Books are not only
for sharing knowledge but also remembering it? These days, just memorizing
core concepts such as finding the correct information, how to evaluate it, and
how to apply it should be enough? Leave the rest of the recalling for our
computers.

~~~
asoplata
I think it's at least very helpful in building emergent knowledge, knowledge
of connections between things that, only after experience / long-term
processing, you realize are instructive or related or at least similar or,
very commonly, "Y is really just a special case of the more general X" idea.

It's still completely possible to learn some of the outgoing connections or
equivalences after a specific search of the internet, but the more things you
spend time ruminating on, the more connections/realizations seem to almost
"bubble up" out of your subconscious/whatever. I think this is what
[inspiration]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_inspiration#Ancient_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_inspiration#Ancient_models_of_inspiration))
is: the result of subconscious processing or drawing relationships between
thoughts in your head that are memorized. That, I think, is what you wouldn't
have anymore if you were to completely outsource your knowledge to the
Internet. I have witnessed some brilliant statisticians come up with
completely new ways for researchers to think of their data/analysis, without
ever consulting Google...though that's a relatively poor example, and more
related to developed Mathematical Intuition than anything else. I would argue
that said developed intuition is a perfect example of drawing underlying
connections between things by letting them stew around in your brain,
connections that would be very much harder to find overtly.

