<story><title>In Praise of Memorization</title><url>http://www.pearlleff.com/in-praise-of-memorization</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>turboponyy</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them.&lt;p&gt;Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn&amp;#x27;t help but remember them eventually.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that this leads to a good rule of thumb: never memorize anything - if you use the thing often enough, you can&amp;#x27;t help but memorize it anyway.&lt;p&gt;Of course, you could argue that how often you use something isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily equivalent to how much utility you might get out of memorizing said thing, and I don&amp;#x27;t disagree with that.&lt;p&gt;All that being said, I do agree with the article&amp;#x27;s premise that an expansive knowledge base aids reasoning, which does seem to be in conflict with my principle. I definitely do possess a basic knowledge of geography, and it does definitely aid my reasoning, but I don&amp;#x27;t ever remember actively memorizing that - not at school, nor elsewhere.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>omnicognate</author><text>I had a similar view as a kid, driven mostly by the fact that I wasn&amp;#x27;t very good at memorisation. I found that I could get by in maths without it, eg. deriving the quadratic formula by completing the square rather than memorising it. I didn&amp;#x27;t value memory much as a tool in maths.&lt;p&gt;After having studied maths and physics at university and worked as a programmer in a mathematical field for 20 years (and studied much more maths in my spare time), I now see my poor recall as the limiting factor in my abilities in maths. The main reason I don&amp;#x27;t think I could ever have been a professional mathematician is that I would have reached (and have reached in my own learning as an amateur) a ceiling.&lt;p&gt;I have maths books that are beloved to me, that I have read multiple times (actively, working with pen and paper as one should) and which I will enjoy again in future. But the concepts in those books do not remain in my mind. I don&amp;#x27;t reach a point where the structure of basic linear algebra, say, is baked in.&lt;p&gt;I am good at the problem solving, but maths is an edifice, one people have been building onto for millenia. I explore that edifice, and keep returning to my favourite bits of it, but the portion of that structure that is resident in my mind is, and I think always will be, small. It&amp;#x27;s a window, and as more comes into it, more slides out. Everybody must have such a window, but I know others have much larger windows than me. And that&amp;#x27;s fine - I&amp;#x27;m a programmer, not a mathematician. But I think it&amp;#x27;s something I would have benefitted from understanding earlier in my life. Perhaps I would have set about &amp;quot;learning to learn&amp;quot; differently. Rote memorisation and active curation of memories already formed could have benefitted me greatly.</text></comment>
<story><title>In Praise of Memorization</title><url>http://www.pearlleff.com/in-praise-of-memorization</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>turboponyy</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them.&lt;p&gt;Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn&amp;#x27;t help but remember them eventually.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that this leads to a good rule of thumb: never memorize anything - if you use the thing often enough, you can&amp;#x27;t help but memorize it anyway.&lt;p&gt;Of course, you could argue that how often you use something isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily equivalent to how much utility you might get out of memorizing said thing, and I don&amp;#x27;t disagree with that.&lt;p&gt;All that being said, I do agree with the article&amp;#x27;s premise that an expansive knowledge base aids reasoning, which does seem to be in conflict with my principle. I definitely do possess a basic knowledge of geography, and it does definitely aid my reasoning, but I don&amp;#x27;t ever remember actively memorizing that - not at school, nor elsewhere.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samatman</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never regarded memorization highly&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You were probably taught that memorization means &amp;quot;memorization, plus you will be examined and punished and rewarded accordingly, in many cases against any natural inclination to memorize the object of conditioning&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I doesn&amp;#x27;t, but you&amp;#x27;re right to not regard this highly.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;never memorize anything - if you use the thing often enough&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;ll memorize it, yes.</text></comment>