Study tips for technical subjects

[Puffy]

I was curious if anyone could share any study tips, in particular for memorising technical information.

I'm doing the equivalent of an A-level (or high school) qualification in anatomy, physiology and pathology. I always did well in humanities as I'm good at essay writing. I did well in computer science, mostly as I learned everything vocationally just through building websites.

Science is something I've typically been bad at and was my worst topic at school. Confronted with lots of technical terms, familiar diagrams of cells and periodic tables, I'm finding it difficult to absorb the information.

So, I guess I'm curious what's helped you in studying technical subjects and how do you generally approach it?

 

[Hadoblado]

I have always got by through visualisation and mnemonics. My memory for general unelaborated information is worse than average but using mnemonics I can remember entire essays to spit out in an exam or a whole pack of cards.

The issue is that the mnemonics you use are highly personal and require deep elaboration to match the information with a suitable way of remembering it. I find that hierarchies can be reduced to spatial relations mapped through a combination of people and places based on how close those people/places are to me, for instance. But this might not work for you.

Drawing flowcharts and categorisations also helps. I often dick around in a spreadsheet just to move categories around and commit them to memory.

 

[Puffy]

I have always got by through visualisation and mnemonics. My memory for general unelaborated information is worse than average but using mnemonics I can remember entire essays to spit out in an exam or a whole pack of cards.

The issue is that the mnemonics you use are highly personal and require deep elaboration to match the information with a suitable way of remembering it. I find that hierarchies can be reduced to spatial relations mapped through a combination of people and places based on how close those people/places are to me, for instance. But this might not work for you.

Drawing flowcharts and categorisations also helps. I often dick around in a spreadsheet just to move categories around and commit them to memory.

Thanks Hado, would you mind sharing examples of mnemonic techniques you've found helpful?

 

[dr froyd]

this probably sounds strange but for me, one of the things that helped when studying math and computer science was to learn about the history of the various topics, reading old math texts (like the original writings of newton, euclid), and even biographies of these people. A lot of the seemingly arbitrary rules and conventions of these things made more sense to me, and it provided context in terms of what problems people were trying to solve when they came up with these things.

 

[Hadoblado]

It's hard to give broad recommendations because I make them up as I go, often overlapping many techniques.

For sequence, I walk through a familiar place in my head and interact with each component (method of loci). As stuff gets more complicated, I interact with familiar people in familiar places regarding that topic or something related to it. So my Mum represents #1, my dad #2, my sister #3 etc. and that'll correspond to something. Visualising the first place I lived at is equivalent of 1 as well. So now I've got two axies I can plot on (and you can expand this in other ways, like rooms in the house to create serial numbers).

So (fabricated example) if I'm trying to remember the position for thallium on the periodic table (78): My family member I'm 7th most close to is a cousin. I visualise meeting them at the eighth place I lived. I'm trying to convince them to listen to djent (thall is an old meme for that genre). Thall is the string I pull to unravel the memory, which will springout at me. As time goes by, I learn more about thallium and the periodic table, I will replace this mnemonic with less arbitrary information and I'll have more points to relate it to. I rarely remember my mnemonics long term - I either come to not need them to remember, or no longer need to remember.

This is what I'd use for a large undertaking like the periodic table, but I wouldn't be this systematic for something smaller. I'd probably go with acronyms and some word play.

 

[Black Rose]

I learned science by looking at the pictures.

Maybe it is because I can't read (derp)

But it is the technical stuff I can't do.

Technical as in electrical mechanical and computer.

 

[Black Rose]

There is no reason to do stuff whatever I do.

Experiments cost money.

Practically it is better not to break things you need.

I make drawings but they are not practical.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Mind maps once a week couldn't hurt.

 

[sushi]

use a web (mind map)

simiplification

start small and little

 

[fractalwalrus]

I was curious if anyone could share any study tips, in particular for memorising technical information.

I'm doing the equivalent of an A-level (or high school) qualification in anatomy, physiology and pathology. I always did well in humanities as I'm good at essay writing. I did well in computer science, mostly as I learned everything vocationally just through building websites.

Science is something I've typically been bad at and was my worst topic at school. Confronted with lots of technical terms, familiar diagrams of cells and periodic tables, I'm finding it difficult to absorb the information.

So, I guess I'm curious what's helped you in studying technical subjects and how do you generally approach it?

Double down on memorizing what you have failed to memorize. This sounds simplistic, but what I did was quiz myself on a topic and I did not review info that I already had retained, and instead drilled in the info I got wrong. Study your errors and memorize those since, for whatever reason, your brain has decided to filter in favor of things you can already recall with ease.