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Almost all education (think math) is taught in a linear fashion, teachers teach in an order because they exist in linear time, and textbooks are organized front to back, but learning should be more like a DAG (a tree) of dependencies.

We don't even need AI. I'd love to see something like Khan Academy mixed with space repetition and an DAG of knowledge dependencies. If you get a question wrong, the spaced repetition algorithm should present material about the underlying dependencies. Unfortunately, Khan Academy is focused on conforming to the linear paths (curriculums) that schools and universities have chosen.




Very niche, but deal.ii, the most popular open source library for hand-rolling finite element method code, lays out its tutorial exactly like this

https://www.dealii.org/developer/doxygen/deal.II/Tutorial.ht...


isn't learning (especially math) spaced Repetition per default?

i.e. you learn about "addition". Then you repeat your knowledge of "addition" when you learn about "multiplication", because it is just "addition" but with extra steps.

I think the more important a concept is, the more spaced Repetition you will experience. If you only repeat a piece of information very rarely, it may not be very essential, and you should consider dropping it from the curiculum.

Also there are information, which only exist as stepping stones to understand more complex topics. And once you understand the more complex thing well enough, you can forget about some of the stepping stones. For example: I once learned a proof, that basically says that all computers can solve the same set of problem in roughly the same amount of time (within a linear factor). I forgot all the details about the proof, but in my every day life as a programmer it is important to know, that the benefit "better hardware" can only get more so far, and for really strong performance-gains, I need to improve my algorithms.


Kind of, but students can develop mental crutches and hobble along while missing some underlying concepts. I know I never mastered factoring a polynomial in algebra and managed to get through calculus and statistics and computer science, etc.


It should be, but if the teacher is teaching you multiplication and you are struggling because you haven't reviewed addition in a while, the teacher will probably just yell at you.

Only the most dedicated of teachers will review addition with you yet again before moving on with multiplication lessons. After all, there are dozens of kids in the class, they can't all delay the lesson just for your sake.


Coincidentally, you may be interested in this post from today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954571


We are doing that and much more at https://teaching.app

Look at the ways we change teaching




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