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How I use Anki to learn mathematics - LessWrong

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Here is my first less wrong post (after years spent blogging in French). I discoveredAnki on this blog. I'm now sharing the tips I've been using for months to learn mathematics with Anki. Example(s) of deck can be found on http://milchior.fr/Anki/ I'm a French researcher in fundamental computer science, which essentially means that I do mathematics all day long. But my biggest problem is that I'm really bad at learning mathematics. Let me give an example. Hopefully, you should be able to understand even if you don't know the domains I'm using in my examples. One day, I wanted to discover what category theory is. Another day, I wanted to read an introduction to number theory. Two subjects which seem really interesting. And the first pages of those books seems to be crystal clear. After 10 or 20 pages, I have already forgotten the definitions given in the first page, and I am lost. Definitions are not hard, there is just too many of them. Let me emphasize that I'm speaking of learning definitions you understand. As far as I know, it is mathematically useless to learn things you do not understand. (Apart, may be, if you try to learn the first digits of Pi, or some few things like that). In the category theory example, definitions are explained by showing how well-known properties of algebra or of topology are special cases of the introduced category definition. Those examples are really helpful to understand the definitions. Indeed, it allows my mind to go from new notions to known notions. For example, I recall that Epi and Mono are generalization of injective and of surjective. Or of surjective and injective. I can't remember which is which. But at least I know that an arrow can both be Epi and Mono. And even know that I know that Epi in Sets are surjective, I still don't know which of the properties of surjection remains. Which is a trouble since having only the Set example would imply that Epi and Mono imply Iso. And, to solve this kind of problem, a spaced memoriz

x How I use Anki to learn mathematics — LessWrong Spaced Repetition Scholarship & Learning Personal Blog 42 How I use Anki to learn mathematics by Arthur Milchior 7th Dec 2016 9 min read 13 42 Here is my first less wrong post (after years spent blogging in French). I discovered Anki on this blog. I'm now sharing the tips I've been using for months to learn mathematics with Anki. Example(s) of deck can be found on http://milchior.fr/Anki/ I'm a French researcher in fundamental computer science, which essentially means that I do mathematics all day long. But my biggest problem is that I'm really

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