How to retain information (long-term)

[tamtam402]

I was wondering if anyone has tips on retaining information. I already completed Calc I and II, finished both with 93+ and yet 6 months after my Calc II course, I feel like I forgot a great deal of what we were teached. For example, I remember we learned about series in Calc II, such as geometric and harmonic series, but I don't even remember the difference between them!

Has anyone found a way to remember stuff for a long time? I was thinking about this and I wanted to read my calc I and II books again, while taking a few notes of the very important stuff. Would summarizing these books in 2-3 pages allow me to remember 90%+ of the content, if I read my notes every 2 weeks or so? I plan to do this for ALL the courses I take from now on; is this a successful strategy to remember this stuff for a long time? Basically, I figured remembering something is way easier than learning something. If I read and understand a calc I book, take notes, and keep reading the notes, I'll never really forget the stuff, thus never have to learn the content again, right?

This sounds good on paper but I'm not sure if this is viable. Something else I considered is that by learning more advanced math, this math will seem basic on comparison, making it much more easier to remember intuitively.

Please share your tips!

 

[fss]

Just do lots of practice problems.

 

[Danger]

I use a pen and paper.

 

[tamtam402]

Just do lots of practice problems.

I'm not talking about remembering stuff for an exam. I did hours and hours of problems in my calc I and II, but I don't remember much specific details on what was covered. I don't have a bad memory either. Doing 5000 problems in one year on calculus 1 content won't help me much in 2 years if I don't do anything between these 2 years to remember the content.

For example, people taking calc-based physics courses will remember their Calc courses better since they actually use what they were teached. If you were to study calc without ever using it again, you'd find that you forget the stuff after awhile (although I'm sure it's easier to re-teach yourself what you forgot, it is time-consuming).

I want to teach myself higher level mathematics, but I already go to University in an unrelated field, so I'm not in maths all day every day. This is why I need some tips to remember what I learn. I was hoping someone would have extensive knowledge, or personal tips and tricks on this. What I proposed in my first post sounds good on paper (resuming an entire book on the fewest pages possible and reading it every few weeks) but I'm not sure if it's really effective.

 

[fss]

What I proposed in my first post sounds good on paper (resuming an entire book on the fewest pages possible and reading it every few weeks) but I'm not sure if it's really effective.

Even if it was effective for one person that doesn't automatically mean it's effective for you, so be careful with this line of reasoning.

If you Google "http://www.google.com/search?q=How+...=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a"" you get over 500,000,000 results. Why not start there and see if you find any methods you think might work for you? Regardless of what's suggested here the results won't become apparent for a few years anyways.

 

[tamtam402]

Even if it was effective for one person that doesn't automatically mean it's effective for you, so be careful with this line of reasoning.

If you Google "http://www.google.com/search?q=How+...=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a"" you get over 500,000,000 results. Why not start there and see if you find any methods you think might work for you? Regardless of what's suggested here the results won't become apparent for a few years anyways.

It's just heart-breaking for me to know the stuff I try so hard to learn right now will be forgotten in a few years. Hell, all of my teachers keep saying stuff like "I know most of you aren't interested by this and you just remember stuff for exams then forget everything as fast as you learned it". I find it sad because I'm interested by theorems, theories, formulas and how to derive them, whatever. I'd like to remember all the math I learn but I don't know how I could do that.

 

[pallidin]

I think it has been proven(sorry, no source) that if you either write down, perform visualization, or actually physically with your body duplicate a desired remembered event, or associate an emotion with it, or associate it with a smell, you are MUCH more likely to remember it.

Just my thoughts...

 

[lisab]

Just do lots of practice problems.

Yep, use it or lose it.

 

[dav2008]

The first question is why do you want to remember? There are so many details in every course you take it's not necessarily practical to remember them all. I think you should automatically remember some basic things about the course (conceptual things) and then just be familiar with the details.

If you ever need to do a complicated integral, you can always look in a book to refresh your memory. The point is that you were able to do that complicated integral at some point in the past so it will come back easily once you have a quick refresher.

 

[fluxions]

Here's a quote of Norbert Wiener:

"It is not essential for the value of an education that every idea be understood at the
time of its accession. Any person with a genuine intellectual interest and a wealth
of intellectual content acquires much that he only gradually comes to understand
fully in the light of its correlation with other related ideas. . . . Scholarship is a
progressive process, and it is the art of so connecting and recombining individual
items of learning by the force of one’s whole character and experience that nothing
is left in isolation, and each idea becomes a commentary on many others."

I believe this also applies to remembering facts/results/ideas/notions the first time you meet them. Of course you ought to try to 'memorize' everything you come across, but if you are unable to do so, it's no big deal; for if it is important, you will run across it again, at which point you can review it. It should be easier to understand the second, third, or fourth time around; and it will be easier to recall, too, for you will have gained additional perspective, and you will see how it is connected to other things.

 

[djosey]

My personal approach is to memorize as few things as possible, and to focus on understanding the concepts and being able to rederive most things each time you use them. Basic example for calculus, there's a rule for differentiation of products and one for differentiation of quotients, i just remember the product one because a quotient can very easily become a product.

 

[DrummingAtom]

I've had this kinda stuff happen to me too. But even if I forget what something is I can usually derive it and then remember "oh yeah, that's what it is." A golden rule for me personally is if someone shows me something I forget it very fast. If I learn it on my own I never forget it. Feynman himself said he couldn't understand anything until he "discovered" it himself. Let us know if you find any methods that work well. Good luck.

 

[symbolipoint]

My personal approach is to memorize as few things as possible, and to focus on understanding the concepts and being able to rederive most things each time you use them. Basic example for calculus, there's a rule for differentiation of products and one for differentiation of quotients, i just remember the product one because a quotient can very easily become a product.

This method for ... ... was presented to Calculus 1 students; see if you know what it is used for:

ho d hi minus hi d ho over ho ho

 

[dav2008]

This method for ... ... was presented to Calculus 1 students; see if you know what it is used for:

ho d hi minus hi d ho over ho ho

We learned it as "Lo d hi minus hi d low. Square the bottom and put below"

 

[Chunkysalsa]

Honestly as long as you can recognize and remember certain concepts then it should be easy to look up techniques and remember them fairly quickly.

Other than that it's just practice. Then again eventually you'll know so much information and it'll be a daunting task to practice and remember all of that.

 

[AlephZero]

If you use information repeatedly, you remember it. Otherwise, it doesn't reallly matter, because if you learned and really understood something in the past, you can relearn it very quickly when you need it again.

But the key word of the previous sentence is "understood". If your studying technique is just to remember stuff for a couple of days to pass the next test, that probably doesn't count for much, because you aren't really "learning" anything except how to do the minimum amount of work to get through your tests.