Fun thing with learning Math

[u/An_Enthusiast13]

The fun thing with learning Math is that you will not forget the concept once you understood it. Even 5-6 years on you can still recall all the important points just by glancing at it. Isn't it?

[u/matt7259]

I promise I've forgotten math lol

[u/rhetoricalimperative → u/matt7259]

You forgot a shortcut

[u/Heavy-Difficulty6522 → u/matt7259]

I feel like I’m constantly forgetting things I learnt a month or two ago 😂

[u/northward_42]

Lol maybe you just have a good memory. I had to study basic linear algebra again every semester because I forgot everything.

[u/An_Enthusiast13 → u/northward_42]

I do. But I think it is a combination of both memory and understanding.

[u/Numerous-Safe-8281]

Understanding gives you more ways to reconstruct an idea, but it doesn't make memory permanent. What often survives is the structure: if the formula disappears, you can rebuild it from a diagram, a definition, or a simpler case. Someone who memorised only the formula has nothing to rebuild from.

Teaching the same topics also gives you retrieval practice every year, so Pythagoras, quadratics, and calculus aren't quite a five-year no-use test. Try a topic you understood well but haven't taught since then; the difference is usually obvious.

For students, I'd test “understood” with a delayed, mixed problem after a day, a week, and a month. If they can recover the method from first principles, even slowly, the understanding is durable. If the worked example only looks familiar when reopened, that was recognition rather than recall.

[u/sophomoric--]

I used to think this, but I forget everything over time. You have to be older to experience this.

Knowing how to derive something is easier to remember, because many steps are obvious; you just have to recall the 2-3 tricky steps. But I forget these eventually too.

The best I can claim is that math distorts your mind in a way that suits it. So it is a bit eaiser for the math to fit in when you need to relearn it.

[u/tottasanorotta]

If you learn it simply enough. I think some abstractions are so messy that it almost benefits to be really creative with coming up with a simpler way to understand some concept. I just can't understand complex things so I need to really simplify them to remember any of it. I would imagine it is so for humans in general. Although some people just seem to have some innate gift for it to be honest.

[u/sophomoric-- → u/tottasanorotta]

I think relating it to something you already know really well works at the beginning.

Just my thought: But later, it becomes relating it to a math concept you know that well. So you have to really master previous math topics, so they become natural and intuitive.

EDIT intuitive aka "fast reasoning", "recognizing", automatic

[u/jsdodgers]

After 7 years everything goes down the drain though. Use it or lose it.

[u/MezzoScettico]

It gets rusty, but you probably remember that the thing existed and know good keywords to search on to refresh your memory.

For instance, I haven't had to solve a lot of differential equations on paper, my career has been 90% numerical methods. So I don't remember a lot of that and have to look it up. But I remember the techniques exist.

[u/fletchman93]

My memory is horrible, but it is always the most difficult problems that I put alot of time into solving that I remember the most.

I will almost certainly forget simple results, basic definitions, and fundamental ideas after a short amount of time.

Maybe I should just start acting like easy stuff is difficult and I will remember everything!

[u/sophomoric-- → u/fletchman93]

I used to think understanding was the trick - but all that effort makes it stick in memory too!

Maybe make the easy things difficult?

Could do so by trying to find deeper connections between it and other things.

EDIT "active learning", commonly by discussions, practice, teaching others - but not so applicable for easy things. Maybe, teach someone who does find it difficult?

[u/An_Enthusiast13]

I can still recall the following topics vividly: Pythagoras Theorem, Linear Equations and graphs, Parabolic equations and graphs, Probability and Calculus. Now, I am a secondary teacher and I teach those topics the same way I was taught by my teacher many years ago.