(Light factual material is best for speed reading, since the actual
form of the words is irrelevant and a paraphrase will do just as well.
I cannot effectively speed-read high literature, because in some cases
it's the actual sound of the words written that carries some of the
meaning - for extreme example James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake'. Reading
that at higher than speaking speed is pointless, at least in my
opinion.)
So yes, I believe I did detect a difficulty due to a lag between
perception and meaning, but thought it was normal as I was clearly
smarter than most of my class (he said modestly :) - but with truth).
On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 6:27 PM, chausseau nicolas wrote:
> btw to boost learning (besides from EMDR :)) I bought this software a few
> weeks ago; I didn't try it yet but it looks promising:
> google "super memo".
>
> apparently spaced repetition is the key to powerful memorization (that makes
> more sense evolutionarly speaking than EMDR). if you revise too early and
> too fast it's cramming, but if you revise not too often and regularly enough
> you get the best rates of long term memorization. makes sense I guess, but
> you need discipline to get it done. his blog/ site is full of interesting
> articles.
Yes, I've recommended spaced repetition here as well. BTW, if you find
the SuperMemo interface a bit... baroque or unusable, Mnemosyne is a
superior Free alternative program.
- --
gwern
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Well, SuperMemo/SR in general is best for vocabulary learning and
foreign languages, and those are the people to whom it appeals most.
But it's useful for a lot of other things. Learning syntax of computer
languages, for example. I recently ran into trouble doing division in
TeX*; I looked it up and learned that division goes like
\frac{{n}}{{m}}. So I added in 4 or 5 cards. (1 asks how to do
division and gives that formula; another vice-versa; then 3 cards gave
the formula with mistakes in it - forward slash instead of back,
single brackets instead of double, etc.) I do similar things for
Haskell, Java, and Scheme.
(The questions don't have to be just on syntax; the API or general
questions about the language are equally worthwhile. IIRC, The
SuperMemo website has a page on using SR with programming languages,
and it says that since you'll spend about 5 minutes memorizing a card
over the years, you should memorize any thing that you would
cumulatively spend >5 minutes looking up or trying to remember.)
Or it's fun to put random quotes into it. Today showed the Socrates
quote: "Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's
writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard
for." Which certainly seems appropriate.
Or one can memorize personal information - license plate number, bank
PIN number, peoples' birthdays etc. The amount of information amenable
to memorization or just plain review is very much greater than most
people think.
Some people put it to strange uses, though; I saw one fellow on the
Mnemosyne list who used it to manage what music tracks he listened to!
* For some little formulas on my personal wiki
--
gwern