Top all-time · #1513
Michael Nielsen
Personal blog · cognitivemedium.comscienceai
Michael Nielsen writes Cognitive Medium, a personal blog at cognitivemedium.com about science and ai. Since 2015, 47 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (25) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Michael Nielsen's blog mainly for his essay on using spaced repetition to learn mathematics, often suggested to Anki users. Other posts cited include his notes on memory and Magic Paper.
- Recommended for · 11 comments
- Called great, nice and influential; the spaced-repetition-for-maths essay is recommended as a read.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 25 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Repo for cognitivemedium.com
Most-linked posts?
- Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics14 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2022-08-08
- Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-01-13
- Thought as a Technology3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-11-28
- Magic Paper (2017)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-11-05
- Michael Nielsen – Notes on Striking User Interfaces2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-21
- In what sense is quantum computing a science?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-26
- The varieties of material existence2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-20
- In what sense is quantum computing a science?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-12-13
- /magic_paper/assets/Hornik.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-06-23
- Magic Paper2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-11-03
What Hacker News says?
Thanks for going to some trouble explaining your point of view. I'll try to clarify mine: yes, a plus sign vs. a capital sigma can be quickly explained. Let's imagine you're reading a short paper about, say, signal processing, and it says in a footnote or prefatory matter "we use tau for 2 pi". Also it uses the sum notation I brought up. Oh, and the exponential is different too: maybe one of these https://math.stack…
Comment linking /
on “Why do many math books have so much detail and so little enlightenment? (2010)”Submitted Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics as a story · 256 points
HN discussionI'm a big fan of the idea of using Spaced Repetition for this. The idea is that it allows you to both: - be able to keep your knowledge / understanding of an area around for the long term; but also - be able to gradually build up your understanding by first committing the fundamentals to memory, and then using that to build up your level of abstraction and get to the more complex ideas and principles. Michael Nielse…
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Ask HN: How do you learn complex, dense technical information?”Submitted Magic Paper as a story · 216 points
HN discussionIt can help. In the article, I recommend Nielsen "Seeing through a piece of mathematics", which is about exactly this. http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition”Submitted Why does F = ma? as a story · 153 points
HN discussionFor maths, but not only: https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Hashcards: A plain-text spaced repetition system”Submitted The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change as a story · 152 points
HN discussionThis post by Micheal Nielsen explores his strategies to convert stuff into Anki in detail. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html Also this on math into Anki. http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Strategies, Tips, and Tricks for Anki”Submitted Thought as a Technology as a story · 148 points
HN discussionHave a look at this article by Michael Nielsen: https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics Old HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18895613 Or this one: https://cronokirby.com/posts/2021/02/spaced-repetition-for-m... Hasn't been on HN before so I just posted it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32390730
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall”Submitted Toward an exploratory medium for mathematics as a story · 111 points
HN discussionHere's Michael Nielsen on using spaced repetition for math: https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Spaced repetition memory system (2024)”Submitted In what sense is quantum computing a science? as a story · 83 points
HN discussionI'm only one year into using Anki and to be honest mathematics hasn't been a huge focus for me, so I'm not a great person to ask. Have you read this article by Michael Nielsen? http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics I've noticed that I spend a lot of time on leeches and sometimes I go back to break them down into smaller pieces, but I haven't found it to be a major problem. How does SuperMemo handle it?
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “A Programmer’s Regret: Neglecting Math at University”Submitted The varieties of material existence as a story · 46 points
HN discussionAndy's collaborator Michael Nielsen has a nice blog post, "using space repetition system to see through a piece of maths"[0]. He makes a point that the idea is to commit more and more higher order concepts to memory. But he does emphasise that Anki is one way to achieve his and a more simpler pen-paper method that you wrote might work. [0] : https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “How Might We Learn?”Submitted The varieties of material existence (2018) as a story · 35 points
HN discussionI haven't worked through it, but Michael Nielsen has a great article about this: https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics .
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)”Submitted Thought as a Technology (2016) as a story · 14 points
HN discussionWhile not exactly an answer to your question, you could go through the process described here: http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics Which would probably burn that into your brain pretty well.
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Train Your Brain Like a Memory Champion”Submitted Michael Nielsen – Notes on Striking User Interfaces as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHaha sorry about that bug definitely one to fix soon. I love the idea of instantly evaluated math -- I haven't used Math-Mode/Mathjs but I have used SymPy -- I think the barrier is the difficult syntax / typing it out. Though it's definitely a step towards Magic Paper[0] [0] http://cognitivemedium.com/magic_paper/
Comment linking /magic_paper/
on “Show HN: Sunflower Editor – like adding console.log to every line of your code”Submitted What does the quantum state mean? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNielsen has http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics , for example. I would strongly recommend not having entire problems as a single card; it's absolutely crucial that answering any particular card is a single mental motion. (You can get by with a very small workload if your cards are more complex than that, but it doesn't scale even in the medium term.) I wouldn't go any more complex than "what is 75 * 43". As a…
Comment linking /srs-mathematics
on “Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job”Submitted In what sense is quantum computing a science? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIndeed the typical wisdom in math is that the best way to understand a group (and the reason we usually care about one) is its actions. There's some quote to the effect of: "Just as with men, a group is known by its actions." This was the only reference I could find off the top of my head https://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/group-actions-i/ , but I've definitely heard the sentiment repeated in a couple different…
Comment linking /invisible_visible/invisible_visible.html
on “Functional Programming, Abstraction, and Names”Submitted Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Is there a place for quantum computers if classical algorithms become more capable at simulating quantum mechanics in ways we find useful? There is not. Our existence as a field pretty much hinges on classical computers not being able to simulate all quantum mechanical problems efficiently. We imagine that designing quantum matter: https://cognitivemedium.com/qc-a-science , https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.02595 will be…
Comment linking /qc-a-science
on “Quantum Advantage for NP Approximation”Submitted Thought as a Technology as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
