Re:Tips for Success in Undergraduate Math Courses (2002)
by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @05:35PM
(#13075344)
>What is are the homology groups of a group with integer coefficients? Ha. Good luck doing anything with it if you haven't memorized it. //
I feel you're missing the point the parent was making. The point as I see it is not to try not to know the answer without deriving it but to not set out to simply memorise the answer.
Of course through use you'll commit certain proofs, formulae, corollaries or what have you to memory; but that's not what people generally mean by "memorising". When studying [undergrad honours, UK] I didn't set out to memorise things and often relied on working out formulae/results/theorems from first principles or from some other theorem. [Perhaps this is a physicist thing, I did joint honours in Phys/Maths]
Remembering and memorising are different approaches that lead to a similar result; however IME remembering when you didn't set out to is often much better. For me I could cram and memorise some results, but then that subject matter never stuck around long afterwards.
I feel you're missing the point the parent was making. The point as I see it is not to try not to know the answer without deriving it but to not set out to simply memorise the answer.
Of course through use you'll commit certain proofs, formulae, corollaries or what have you to memory; but that's not what people generally mean by "memorising". When studying [undergrad honours, UK] I didn't set out to memorise things and often relied on working out formulae/results/theorems from first principles or from some other theorem. [Perhaps this is a physicist thing, I did joint honours in Phys/Maths]
Remembering and memorising are different approaches that lead to a similar result; however IME remembering when you didn't set out to is often much better. For me I could cram and memorise some results, but then that subject matter never stuck around long afterwards.