Should you read a textbook more than once for mastery?

[rxh140630]

One of my professors is a very smart man and has done a lot of very important work/research. He says to obtain mastery you want to read a book front to back about 3 times. Is this an accurate statement in your experience? I feel that it may be.

 

[SchroedingersLion]

Nowhere as experienced as your prof, but I would say that time is always an important constraint.
Do you have time to work through the same book three times?

To my shame, I have never finished a textbook that I was trying to work though in my spare time completely. I like to understand the things that I read thoroughly, i.e. I get stuck on details and on entire chapters, trying to clarify questions before I move on. Doing it like this means that you take much longer than if you just read it not caring about stuff you don't understand. However, it might also mean that you don't have to read it again after you have finished.

In order to not get stuck infinitely, I started writing down questions that I came across. Is the particular question important to understand the next chapters? Then try to clarify it immediately. Is it just some minor detail? Just move on, and come back to the question after you have finished.

 

[FactChecker]

It is true that textbooks are to be studied. Some are used for reference and others are read (essentially) all the way through. I doubt that I have ever read any textbook from beginning to end. Even if you go to a book only for reference, the part that you look at can be studied until it is clear.

 

[hutchphd]

I am an absolute believer in the general physics rule of three: that I need to see a subject at least thrice (separated by "enough" time) in order to begin to understand it. At university perhaps only one of the iterations is reading the book and that makes it better. The intervening time is also important, but I am unsure of its required duration...

 

[gleem]

There is nothing magic doing something a given number of times to achieve proficiency. You do something as often as necessary to gain the desired proficiency or required understanding.

 

[PeroK]

One of my professors is a very smart man and has done a lot of very important work/research. He says to obtain mastery you want to read a book front to back about 3 times. Is this an accurate statement in your experience? I feel that it may be.

Yes, three works roughly for me as well. Also, to learn something from two different sources seems to be important. It's the crossover between the same idea in two different contexts that seems to lodge the idea in my brain.

 

[Vanadium 50]

You don't read a textbook. You work through a textbook.

 

[member 587159]

What works for me is reading something more advanced when I finish a topic. That makes the previous topic look easy.

 

[ZapperZ]

One of my professors is a very smart man and has done a lot of very important work/research. He says to obtain mastery you want to read a book front to back about 3 times. Is this an accurate statement in your experience? I feel that it may be.

Did you bother to ask him what he meant by "read a book"?

If you tell this to a non-science person, he/she will scratch his/her head and ask "what's the big deal of reading a book more than once?"

If you take the literal meaning of this, and read your general physics text, I can assure you that no matter how many times you "read" it, you won't learn anything beyond a superficial understanding of it. One doesn't "read" a physics textbook. As Vanadium pointed out, one has to work through a physics textbook.

I will quote Mary Boas in her "To The Student" preface in her classic "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences":

The only way to develop the skill necessary to use this material in your later courses is to practice by solving many problems. Always study with pencil and paper at hand. Don't just read through a solved problem - try to do it yourself! Then solve some similar ones from the problem set for that section...

That is how you work through a physics textbook if you want to understand the material. You don't just "read" it as if it's a novel.

Zz.

 

[symbolipoint]

One of my professors is a very smart man and has done a lot of very important work/research. He says to obtain mastery you want to read a book front to back about 3 times. Is this an accurate statement in your experience? I feel that it may be.

No, it is very inaccurate a statement. Two things are important: (1) What you do with the material you read, while or as you read it, (2) How fast you examine/read/work-with the material you read; and when each of those is attended, (3) doing those two things 3 times might be enough or maybe not. Doing some of the book a fourth time might be very useful, or might only be for refreshment review; or maybe even at some future point, a fifth time "reading" might be useful.

 

[CrysPhys]

One of my professors is a very smart man and has done a lot of very important work/research. He says to obtain mastery you want to read a book front to back about 3 times. Is this an accurate statement in your experience? I feel that it may be.

Regardless of whether you read the book or work through the book, there's another factor you should consider. It's rare for a single text to provide a great explanation of every topic that it attempts to explain. It might be really good at topics A-F, OK at G-K, and lousy at L-P. You won't know until you compare other texts. So if you go over (whatever that means) the entire text front-to-back 3 times over, the time and effort spent on A-F may have been well spent, on G-K partly wasted, and on L-P entirely wasted.

 

[Adesh]

I am an absolute believer in the general physics rule of three: that I need to see a subject at least thrice (separated by "enough" time) in order to begin to understand it.

That phrase "begin to understand it" really feels like intimate to me, it happens to me many a times that I "know" something but my mind finds it as an "alien" and that's what it means that I don't "understand" it. Just because I can solve exercises of some topic after reading it doesn't mean that I have "understood" it, I should feel "familiar" (yes it should feel like a family member) to me.