Hey Beehaw!
I’ve recently received a copy of Physically Based Rendering 4th edition. I’ve been going through the book slowly, but have had a hard time retaining information. I used to use markdown to take extensive notes, but found that I would end up copying too much useless information. Also, writing latex notes for math is painfully slow.
I was wondering what note taking methodologies you all use. I think my ideal note taking method would fulfill three criteria:
- Minimal note-taking overhead: Doesn’t take too much time to create notes. (Esp for complex math expressions)
- Easy to reference: The notes should be brief and easy to comprehend at a glance. They should also be searchable.
- Easy to store: Minimal physical presence. I tend to lose papers all the time.
(I’m going to suggest something a little different than note taking, so I apologize in advance if this doesn’t apply well to this book.) What about coding? Coding toy examples of the concepts I’m learning about programming is how I retain information personally. No excessive software engineering, just a naive implementation of the concept with plenty of comments.
I recommend the book How to Take Smart Notes, or just look up it’s methods online. If you are looking for searchable and easy to reference, the slip-box method might be useful for you.
I have a tablet with a stylus, so I take my notes in OneNote.
I was taking notes when I was going through that CS50x course, but a lot of times, it’s me pausing the video and sketching out the concepts I just learned. Like with linked lists and tries, I would sketch out a flow chart. I would talk to myself and explain to myself why this works, or why this makes sense and I find it helps stick in my head. I figured it out using my own words and my own processes.
I doubt that’s too useful if you don’t have a tablet, (drawing or Android/iPad), and you have issues with losing papers, so probably not too useful 😓 but I find being able to sketch visual representations of processes and functions and mapping out how equations and functions actually look helps me a lot.
My partner once told me of the Feynman Technique. It’s broken down into four steps:
- Study
- Teach
- Fill in Gaps, and
- Simplify.
I highly recommend you go over the link (it’s anchored to the part of the page that goes over the steps).
Hope you find at least some of this useful!
I especially liked what @mifuyne@beehaw.org and @higgsbi@beehaw.org said. Put both together. That I mean essentially hand written notes as needed (the tab is a nice idea) and take notes at the correct level of details. Or you can just use you pen an paper like I did in school. Taking notes at the correct level of detail and then distilling them was always part of my learning process.
In terms of distilling, I felt I was done when I got everything I needed to know on 1 8.5 x 11 sheet both sides for every exam. Then finals, I distilled my exam sheets to one sheet again.
The working of problems that @luciole@beehaw.org mentioned too should be part of this too of course. This could be course work or stuff you think up yourself or just make the book examples work.
Anyway my thought, but maybe things are different now. This was a long time ago for me though I still learn things this way. Though I guess now I put a lot of stuff in Zim but that does not work for things you cannot type.