The mechanical task of taking notes is one of the most important parts of actually absorbing the material. It is not an either-or. Hearing/seeing the information, processing it in a way that makes sense to you individually, and then mechanically writing it down in a legible manner is one of the main methods that your brain learns. It's one of the primary reasons that taking notes is important in the first place. This is referred to as the "encoding hypothesis" [1].
There are actually even studies [2] that show that tools that assist in more efficient note taking, such as taking notes via typing rather than by hand, are actually detrimental to absorbing information, as it makes it easier for you to effectively pass the information directly from your ears to your computer without actually doing the processing that is required when writing notes by hand. This is why many universities prefer (or even require) notes to be taken by hand, and disallow laptops in class.
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0361476X78...
2: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-...
I never had to go back and read any of them. Just the process of typing them up in the first place firmly fixed all the knowledge in my mind. When taking the final and AP test, I could see the notes I had taken in my mind.
Writing or typing didn’t make a difference. Just the rephrasing and condensing alone was enough. (Which, again, reënforces your point. I still had to consciously avoid “pass-thru” regurgitation)
What's it like working at the New Yorker?
(explanation: this is a joke based on the way nobody uses diaresis marks anymore for any word other than naive, except for the New Yorker style guide. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-... )
Note that I'm not at all belittling the study of history...just trying to show the counter to the parent post isn't 100% relevant here IMO.
Yeah, Math is a much different subject when it comes to notetaking and processing the information you learn. There are a few equations to memorize, but to really excel at the subject, you need to learn more why's than you do what's
According to this highly interesting HN thread, Alan Kay apparently doesn't take (much) notes [2]. I also found Warren Buffett's tip to focus on information that "doesn't expire or expires very slowly" an excellent rule of thumb for daily life. Obviously, with decades of books under their belts both of them are outstanding systems thinkers, so it must be true that they just don't need to take notes that much.
I'm a 30-something, but I like to trust my brain's tendency to forget more and more. Most of the stuff I don't remember probably wasn't relevant for my current mental models. If it's important, it sticks in one way or another. (I try to reinforce this by using the aformentioned method of loci, but I'm not as confident with this as I would like to be. It involves creating "sticky" images for the brain, and thus it always requires at least several seconds for me to "store" something that way.)
One probably won't be an A-level student with this approach, though -- but in trying to live a meaningful life, letting things (information) go often helps a lot. It's a great bullshit filter for everything.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
Mathematics already is a sort of hierarchical interconnected structure that allow you to easily remember everything, as long as you understand it. The understanding is the hard part, not remembering it. Mathematics is not a set of random facts that you have to memorize.
This might very well be anecdotal, but in my experience, note taking in class (by hand or on computer) was nearly always how you describe it here. Everyone was expected to copy out every word on the board, from 6 years old to ~20 years old. Maybe it works for some, but to me class was to some extent an exercise in mindless dactilography.
I have gone through most of my middle-school and some high-school in Italy, and after that completed high-school in Moldova. Classes in Moldova were exactly how you described, and I hated it, while in Italy it was exactly the opposite.
Having the teacher explaining and expanding on the content in the course books while students take their own personalized notes is much more efficient and productive.
On the other hand for something like a psychology class where the material is mostly in English prose, then I feel like typing does help. Typing English is not so mechanically different than writing down English since each letter is still in a one-to-one correspondence.
I'm sure history is maybe different where the note taking is probably easy enough and reinforces what you learned, but with math you're not exactly comprehending everything you write down at the same speed as human language. When you're in high school: "The storming of the Bastille happened in..." is different than scribbling down the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus and wondering WTH is on your paper.
The best I think is still to come prepared for class by having read the required readings before hand.
There's almost certainly an advantage to learning to think about math using a publishable symbol set like LaTeX.
We learn by reinforcement; with feedback loops that may take until weeks later in a typical university course.
> There are actually even studies [2] that show that tools that assist in more efficient note taking, such as taking notes via typing rather than by hand, are actually detrimental to absorbing information, as it makes it easier for you to effectively pass the information directly from your ears to your computer without actually doing the processing that is required when writing notes by hand.
Handwriting notes is impractical for some people due to e.g. injury and illegibility.
The linked study regarding retention and handwritten versus typed notes has been debunked with references that are referenced elsewhere in comments on this post. There have been a few studies with insufficient controls (lack of randomization, for one) which have been widely repeated by educators who want to be given attention.
Doodling has been shown to increase information retention. Maybe doodling as a control really would be appropriate.
Banning laptops from lectures is not respectful of students with injury and illegible handwriting. Asking people to put their phones on silent (so they can still make and take emergency calls) and refrain from distracting other students with irrelevant content on their computers is reasonable and considerate.
(What a cool approach to math note-taking. I feel a bit inferior because I haven't committed to learning that valuable, helpful skill and so that's stupid and you're just wasting your time because that's not even necessary when all you need to do is retain the information you've paid for for the next few months at most. If course, once you get on the job, you'll never always be using that tool and e.g. latex2sympy to actually apply that theory to solving a problem that people are willing to pay for. So, thanks for the tips and kudos, idiot)
A textbook is an infinitely better reference than any notes one could take in class. Read the damn book. Lecture time should be for asking questions when you have a freaking live expert professor literally presenting the material to you. Ask all the small, nuanced questions that you can think of in the moment, which you can’t find answers to easily online or in the book.
Not to downplay the efficient workflow here, but there is zero chance that this person’s notes are actually better than a real textbook.
all of these things are solved problems
Your study notes will contain parts of the textbook, of course, but also explanations that are not in the book, maybe examples that you find useful and that might not be in the book, counterexamples, doubts, schematics... No textbook will have 100% of the contents you need to study.
but...
>Ask all the small, nuanced questions that you can think of in the moment, which you can’t find answers to easily online or in the book.
and then what, forget them by the time you go back to the book? Why was the book so good again if it doesn't answer all the questions? It makes more sense to record the answer to those useful questions you ask, maybe in the form of some notes.
So I can appreciate what OP has done here. I took notes in LaTeX for most of my undergraduate math courses (and some graduate ones), and I found it to be a fairly valuable exercise.
I found that taking structured, detailed notes in lectures forced me to pay close attention & work constantly to keep up with the lecturer. For the courses I did that for, it felt like it was equivalent to doing an entire extra revision session with the lecture material for me - I had to do much less work to go over the material after the lecture in order to make sure I understood it, so it was a far more efficient use of my time that just 'attending' the lectures and then doing revision work afterwards.
Some people can maintain that level of connection with the lecture without taking notes of course, but that’s what worked for me.
Me neither. However, what I do once in a while is after I've sat through a tutorial (in person or video) I recall and make notes. It helps me immensely to a) Structure my thoughts b) Recall the actual content which reinforces it in my memory.
As a student, I always found that writing notes/answers on a topic/question made me understand the concept that much better as well as connect them to form a larger picture (e.g., connect concepts in math and physics).
The entire article is very clear and well thought out. To me it signals a disciplined and methodical mind, that learns from doing. And we are lucky it's willing to share.
I fully agree with your parent comment that this article is a demonstration of multiple positive traits of the author, I respect him/her a lot. But also, I cannot help but laugh a bit at myself and the others who up-voted the article. That in no way diminishes my respect for anybody, including the author.
FYI - I've relied on LaTex for submitting to multiple peer reviewed journals, my thesis and my thesis defense presentation (LaTex Beamer), so I fully understand and appreciate the skill level of the author here
Cheers!
And precisely because math is so content-dense, having your notes is important, as they will be organized in a similar way to how the content is organized in your mind. Yeah, there is a lot of study material but most of the time, unless the class follows a textbook literally, you'll want your own set of notes with only the class contents, and you'll want to organize that in a way that is easy for you to understand.
There is absolutely no dearth of study material on the internet. It's one thing to take notes as part of your study process. There it helps solidify your understanding. But surely taking notes on the fly when you have been barely introduced to the subject isn't going to help with that.