--- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> Jan Coffey wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >>I never memorized anything by rote and I always did lousy in school but
> >>has always been very good at taking standardized tests. Why? The
> >>questions can be analyzed and wrong answers eliminated logically.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >You have to have a lot memorized (even if it is not -as I said- by rote)
> to
> >be able to do this.
> >
> >
> But you have to memorize math too - you don't just figure things out
> every time you do a problem do you?
Actualy yes, I do.
> Unless you use your fingers every
> time you add, you have memorized basic addition.
No, I do it every time. And no, I don't need my fingers to do it. I can just
see it. Not that it is a vision, it's an abstraction, I process it every
time.
Even if I did use my fingers I could count to 1023 on them anyway. :)
> Do you figure out pi
> every time you need to use it?
No I do have pi "memorized" to 3 digits, but when is that suficient? It's one
of those things I use a computer for. Why waste your brain on remembering
something if you can look it up in the same amount of time? Knowing why pi is
pi is what is really importat anyway.
> Commutative, distributive and
> associative principals? Is everything in math _easy_ to figure out?
Yes, once you understand the idea it is easy to figure out. Most of these
ideas are things we figure out long before we are tought them anyway. Being
tought them just shows us nuances we were never chalanged to dicover...and
lables, and in learning them we are chalanged to understand the reprocusions,
the next level.
Have you ever worked a rubix cube? You did right, you got the solutions and
you applied them like program. the last level you used the technique to
arange the corners, then flip them properly, then used the other set of moves
which exchange and flip center peices. You memorized the moves. Then you
could solve the puzzle whenever. Some people figured those moves out, or
realized others that did the same thing. They "saw" the rotations needed to
put the peices where they wanted them and then just did that. After working
through it 20 times or so you start to memorize by muscle memory, but that is
seeing understanding, retracig a familiar path. A form of memorization. But
it doesn't last, it fades and after a few years you have to work it all over
again. Do it enough of course and it won't fade. But being able to see the
correct rotation every time you do it, and simply remembering the moves are
two compleatly differnt things.
> >>>You can't learn the system and then be able to discover or "create"
> >>>words based on that system which can then be found as valid words in the
> >>>
> >>>
> >>dictionary.
> >>
> >>Wrong again. You aren't able to create new words, but you most certainly
> >>can create sentences, paragraphs and essays. Just like in other systems
> >>that don't allow you to change the basic building blocks.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Actualy I am not wrong. I specificaly used the word discover. Let's use
> >mathmatics as an example. you have the number 0 and the successor
> function.
> >By applying the successor function to 0 you can aquire 1 etc. etc. Whether
> or
> >not you know what to "call" 1 you can ~discover~ it.
> >
> You _can_ discover how to communicate.
>
> >
> >We are not talking about being able to ~change~ anything just the creation
> or
> >~discovery~ or something that is already a valid "building block".
> >
> >We seem to be degrading into a discussion of linguistics. Ok.
> >
> >Natural languages vary in how well formed they are. In the case of english
> >the rules are not strict. You can not learn the rules and then use them
> >consistently corectly. As such it is not what I would describe as a
> "system"
> >using the assumed definition which you then overloaded. (case in point
> >actualy). You have to memorize which rule applies in which cases, and the
> >~reasons~ these rulls apply in their particular cases has no basis. It
> >requires memorization (whether it is rote or not).
> >
> >Granted in cases where the most probable answer is based on the
> probabliity
> >of one rule applying you can guess resaonably well. Of course the
> probabliity
> >requires memorization as well, and this probabliity is most often based on
> >the way the word is spelled not on the way it sounds. You would therefore
> >have to be able to spell the word properly or at least to have some
> >predjudice for one spelling over another. This again is the same type of
> >degraded ~system~ without proper rules. You just have to memorize it.
> >
> >
> >
> I agree that language is not as precise a system as mathematics, but
> there are many things in the scientific world that are counterintuitive
> - that one has to discover through experimentation and then _memorize_
> unless they keep repeating the experiment every time they want to
> rediscover the phenomenon.
Things are named in counterintuitive ways yes. And there are areas which
seem...odd...seem not to quite fit, to not quite be right. I allways assume
these are becouse we are working with impricise models. But sometimes maybe
theyare just odd due to some incorect predjudice one must overcome.
Remembering the outcome of an experiement, or gaining an understanding of a
system which you can then recal are differnt than memorization. Besides we
can use tools to store much of this information. The kind of inforation you
are talking about now has structure. It fits into the abstract, and therefore
has nodes on which the information can hang. English is direct, brutal, flat,
there are no mappings, no associations, no structure. It does not fit into
the abstract. The information can not be auatomaticaly condenced to a smaller
set of ideas. Each datapoint is discreet. There is no context, no sequence,
nothing on which the infromation can hang. There are pockets, but such
abstractions are too easy to miss-apply.
> And though math may be governed by stricter rules, we use language much
> more frequently and thus memorize through familiarization.
Well, your "we" might, but my "we" doesn't.
=====
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Jan William Coffey
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