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Learning to Learn

(kevin.the.li)
83 points jklm | 5 comments | 22 Oct 24 00:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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dartharva ◴[22 Oct 24 02:38 UTC] No.41910678[source]▶
This is something I have personally struggled with, so I wish the author elaborated more. If you are a novice, how do you quickly identify what the foundational knowledge is? How do you know what makes you an expert and not an "expert beginner" as the author says to the extent that you can build a personal curriculum about it?
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j45 ◴[22 Oct 24 04:17 UTC] No.41911143[source]▶
I'm surprised the course by the name of this post isn't here.

The post covers a great mindset, but the math really is one thing, and learning how you learn and how you can learn is invaluable.

This is a great course to start learning about your learning.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

After/with this, there is a slew of adult learning knowledge that will likely make you feel better.

One key is learning to understand something, before learning to memorize it.

Another is creating your own mind map of how the concepts you are learning fits together.

Farnham street has some great books on mental models as well that was recommended to me as helping

An expert is someone who can often explain complex things in very simple ways. being an innocent beginner is one of the best mindsets to cultivate - you learn what you do and don't know pretty quick, and also a sense of known vs unknown, and size and number of unknowns.

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1. dartharva ◴[22 Oct 24 05:04 UTC] No.41911346[source]▶
I checked these out but couldn't find the answer to the questions I am asking. It tells you how to maximize efficiency while learning, but doesn't tell you how to identify what you should be learning in the first place and what the sequence of your focus should be when you start.
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2. j45 ◴[22 Oct 24 05:07 UTC] No.41911355[source]▶
https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
3. eacapeisfutuile ◴[22 Oct 24 05:11 UTC] No.41911368[source]▶
What do you specifically want to learn? What you need to learn will generally make itself known, if you have some general goal? Just starting at all is the best way to start.
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4. dartharva ◴[22 Oct 24 05:25 UTC] No.41911455[source]▶
Say I want to learn web scraping. Now if I try to start, I see there are several layers of fundamentals and several potential paths, all of which seem equally important. Where do I start? What platform should I use? Should I start from the DOM and HTML parsing and go ahead from there, or should I start from learning Python libraries built for it as so many books and tutorials advise? Going one layer deeper, do I need to learn data structures before anything else? JavaScript and APIs? The fundamentals of TCP networking? Regex?

It's all too overwhelming at times.

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5. eacapeisfutuile ◴[22 Oct 24 05:36 UTC] No.41911489{3}[source]▶
Yeah, start from any point A. A suggestion is where you can progress in some way. Don’t make too many decisions. There’s so many viable ways to learn that, just start where it is natural for you. You don’t have to figure everything out or have answers to everything.