[webwanderings]

This is such a great quote for everyone! No matter the age. No matter what one wants to do.

> “I’m not able to learn mathematics easily,” Talagrand tells ... “I have to work. It takes a very long time and I have a terrible memory. I forget things. So I try to work, despite handicaps, and the way I worked was trying to understand really well the simple things. Really, really well, in complete detail. And that turned out to be a successful approach.”

Just imagine. You may be super smart who gets things easily and right away. Or, you may be average. Using this philosophy in life, one can excel further.

[haolez]

I had a college friend that's super slow to learn. He would always get behind on classes and would not even get passing grades most of the time.

But! When he finally learned something new, he would never forget it. He would remember it in details, both the whys and the hows. I've always admired his skill.

[fnordpiglet]

I’m like this. I barely graduated school and failed out of college in the first year with a GPA whose square root was higher than the actual GPA. I had always been placed in accelerated classes only to be kicked out once I fell behind. I needed time to understand things, but in all modesty once I understand something I seem to understand it better than everyone around me. Until then though my mind is blank and I literally can’t force myself to do anything on the subject. I just stumble and can’t remember anything when asked. Some subjects are faster than others but some took a year or longer to understand. When mathematically inclined friends took algebra they flew through it and graduated high school completing calculus B AP with a 5, but it took me a year of failing it and being tracked before I finally clicked. But once I understood it other math courses were a breeze largely because my algebra understanding was beyond everyone else’s. But I was tracked and getting off the track in math is almost impossible. I likewise had challenges in geometry and trig until I “got it,” all of which meant when I finally hit calculus and got the concepts of differentiation and integration I took off like a rocket and never looked back.

After failing out of college I went out to the valley and was very successful. I went back to college in my late 20’s using a loop hole to transfer into a top CS school. I knew myself better now and studied all the time knowing I wasn’t stupid just learned differently. On things that weren’t yet clicking I would relentlessly keep studying it and practicing and trying until it did. I graduated highest in my class at a top public engineering program - which gives gentleman F’s to 70% of original freshmen unlike private schools.

My daughter is the same way, so I found a private school that is very careful about differentiating learners and letting them move their own pace. I was suicidally depressed about public education growing up as it ground me down for being different. She is thriving at the stages I fell off the rails.

[spiderfarmer]

I always wonder if people like him are able to learn faster if the courses are structured differently.

[emmelaich]

A bit reminiscent of John Carmack's method too; not only does he work for 10 hours a day (preferably uninterrupted) he also secretes himself away at some random location for a week at a time.

It's not the same, I know, but to remember things you have to establish and remember entire trains of thought. Not just remember individual milestones.

[readthenotes1]

There's a story that an American football coach, after gathering the best players he could, would start each season just working on the fundamentals, saying you cannot do the simple easy you can't do complex.

One of his Hall of Fame players said that he woukd begin with "Gentlemen, this is a football"

[mancerayder]

This is true but players understood the goal - play better football.

With math it's what exactly?

If someone worked backwards from code on DAY 1 of high school math, I'd have been engaged... Instead it was mindless repetitive drills. Later as an advanced thing they'd ask you a real-world question: "Let's say you wanted to circumnavigate the Earth and you started here and had to blah blah". I think they should start and not end with that type of thing.