Mind Building

“Of course, there's only a finite rate at which material can be absorbed by human mind, yet we disregard that phenomenon, and in spite of it we go too fast. So, I think I'll just go along slowly, and see how far we get.” –Feynman

Today I looked back and found that, the very few things I remember are exactly those things which I have used to solve some problem!

Sometimes we need to learn in a huge volume. What we do is we put a substantial amount of effort to understand those things but spare the exercise! And that’s where we lose.

Look at the legend of Knuth. He has written ‘The Art of Computer Programming’ it is kind of a voluminous literature survey. But actually it is far more than that. If you look carefully you will see that each chapter contains exercises! Those exercises are mostly created by Knuth himself. Solved, rated, organized and solutions were appended at the end of the book.

Now, do you see how much there is to be done before even to say to yourself that ‘yes, I have learned it’. Same observation works for any other ‘Legendary Genius’. Gauss believed, what you cannot use to solve problems is useless. We can always argue about this for long time but look at the attitude of these great men.

Learn Thoroughly, Solve some exercise, Make some problem for your own, Try to contribute them to that book, and then say, ‘I can do it’.

The equation is simple,
You haven’t solved any problem = You have learned nothing. [It always works]

I mean I have gone through this Kama Sutra thing a few times. Frankly speaking I don't remember a single position except the very obvious ones. Same story for all the mathematics I have learned.

Exercise:
1. In what situation we actually need to cover a huge material in a very short time?
2. Do you think trying to create some practice problem for yourself would require a lot of creativity?
3. Name a few Kama Sutra positions.
4. Write down the most complicated mathematical formula(at least describe it) that you have actually used to solve some problem.