Is taking notes actually fucking necessary? I'm in year

Also, to clarify: For non technical courses, or more elaborate explanations of some scientific processes, shorthand notes are of course necessary. But for any math or physics course ever, why do people even write "notes" down? Shouldn't one put themselves in the situation where they have the problem in front of them and have to think about what they just read from the text/heard from the lecture to apply it to a problem? Why spend hours and hours copying notes?

>>7915406
>>7915411

Short answer: It is an ape thing. It is either a way for slower input, or a social proof of effort.

>thousands and thousands of pages

No you haven't

>>7915406
I've been wondering this myself, OP? I've never looked back at any of the notes I've written (unless it's not in the textbook). I'm considering just watching what the teacher is writing on the board.

>>7915453
nice work, you managed to target minor semantics and make no contribution to the actual thread.
nice job derailing
>inb4 hypocrite

I use a 5 star 500 page extra large notebook every term, usually. 2*3*500 = 3000 pages

If you never use them, don't make them. Especially that you can look most things up online or in a book anyway.
Some people find notes useful, some don't. As simple as that.

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I'm curious about other's habits. Personally, I think the most important part of notes, if you do take them, is to jot down the thought flow of whatever derivation the prof is going over.

That's assuming you have a professor that is fucking organized. I'm stuck in this mechanics class where I'm literally writing what the professor is scribbling on the board. He explains the steps while he's standing right in front of what's written to ensure that any connections are lost. It's really the shittiest habit. Total waste of time.

I should just read the book and not take notes while I try to understand the discussion, but the class is a whirlwind.

>>7915406
Writing things down offers another way to remember what you have learned. Has been shown to work better than typing too.

However, for most, writing is not exactly muscle memory, alot of your attention goes into taking notes. But does this outweigh the benefit?

I dont take lecture notes.
I like listening and watching the way the professor talks about the material. Mouth/hand movements, what is written on the board, facial expressions. Helps me remember. Mnemonics too.

If I forget something, I dont even read the book. I go on youtube and listen to someone talk about it.

>>7915490
OP Here, this is precisely what I'm trying to discuss. So many people are just jotting shit down from the board or whatever the prof says instead of internalizing the content. I'm trying to figure out if the real smart people at MIT and shit actually do something like this or what.

>>7915490
Your method works best, assuming you diligently keep up with the reading.

I write notes. I do all the homework and labs without them. I use my notes to write a cheatsheet a week before the test so i can just reherse the key concepts, methods and equations 3 or 4 times a day and an hour before the test.

Really, i think taking notes helps me focus in class and exercise my hand. I think thats the best benefit because i can always just use other resources for my cheat sheet.

>>7915498
Theres incredibly smart students who write everything down and incredibly smart students who show up to class with nothing. A buddy of mine uses his phone as a tape recorder and jots down times when the professor says something important and will just write down an equation or a key concept discussed by the time. Normal acting guy, but hes autistically proficient at maths.

>>7915595
I wonder how many people take notes simpily because they have been trained to do it throughout the elementary years with "notebook checks"

>>7915406
>My question is - Why do people take notes?
hands teach the mind. the act of writing things down is a form of studying.

also, microstudying is almost impossible without handwritten notes.

I write down important equations or concepts for a little bit of reinforcement but mostly listen and watch. Usually less than a page of notes for each lecture

>>7915406
Notes are useful for when you need to quickly look back at a concept covered in lectures. This is usually more convenient than flipping through the textbook unless your lecturer is the kind that just follows the textbook like he's so sort of human text-to-speech converter, in which case don't even bother going to lectures.
There's no point taking notes if you aren't going to look at them, though. At the very least, you should revise your notes within 24 hours of the lecture, and preferably do problems related to anything you didn't fully grasp.

The way I do it is I take meticulous notes during the lecture and then later I re-write and organize them into a 1 page study guide.

>>7915406
>engineering
its absolutely necessary for engineers. documentation of ideas and work is often legally required. maybe not so much as a junior guy, but i can't think of a single senior engineer who isn't required to keep a company notebook.

It depends on the type of content I need to learn.

Math based:
Just do questions and refer to lecture material if I'm stuck

Chemistry:
Write summaries as it's half math half concept based

Shit-tier subjects:
I have to write notes or I'll lose interest and won't make connections between content. These subjects are usually rote learning (what are the 11 steps of risk assessment?)

You need a lot of notetaking in gender studies desu. Very hard BSc

>>7915662
This was me through american history but i made flow charts and process charts with definitions. Our tests were timed, handwrittem, 2000 word minimum essays. Timed as in 2 hours max.

Visuallizing a flow chart was easier than just rote memorization.

>>7915406
for me the act of writing the notes helps me remember what is said. All of my modules have the slides online, so I normally just outline the important parts and any points of discussion that aren't covered on the slides

>>7915406
Your memory system consists of at least three processes.
First is encoding of raw information from sensory channels into STM,

Second is consolidation of the volatile STM into more durable LTM,
and finally the eventual retrieval of the stored information.

If you're the type of student that is easily distracted, your STM buffer will be filled with nonsense quick. Note taking keeps you extra focused and can help in the process of reconsolidating.

You're constantly swapping things in and out of STM for things coming from your sensory buffer or LTM. You want to keep relevant info in STM.

I used to be studious as fuck about it, but stopped a year ago. Haven't looked back or regretted it a bit. I can actually focus in class, if the content is worth focusing on.

Honestly, most of the stuff is so easy I still don't focus. But that's more a function of going into an easy field than it being unnecessary.

>>7916228
What field?

>>7916242
Mech E.

The coursework is a joke, but they make up for it by drowning you in homework, labwork, and projects. Nothing says engineering quite like 60 hour work weeks, amirite?

>>7915406
The physical act of writing something down helps you remember it.

>>7916253
Why do they give so much coursework for engineering if it's material is much easier than almost every other stem major?

I never take any notes during all my 4 years in uni
> GPA 4.0
seriously my thought on note is that instead of writing useless shit which I would never read again, try to focus in classes and learn everything there instead. save time reviewing your note for doing more productive thing.

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start recording all lectures like I do

>>7916309
Because if you aren't a shriveled up husk of a human by the time you graduate then you didn't earn your degree like everyone else does.

Really, drop the sarcasm there and I'm convinced that that's it. It's a hazing process, a modern 'coming of age' thing. If you don't lose a portion of your humanity in the last two years of your degree then clearly that degree isn't worth shit.

>>7915406
Wat is snek thinking about?

>>7915406
Depends. Taking notes gives me an easy way to bring some concise theory to the problem classes. I don't want to buy 5 books every semester and not every problem class is in a computer room where I can take a look at the ebook, but bringing notes with some key formulas will ensure I won't be stuck on some problem simply because "fuck, what was the formula again?". I often skip derivations and examples as it will often be in the book in a neater way with less chance of it containing mistakes.

I do think taking notes can help you remember and understand things though. Suppose you see some long ass tensor equation in a book, a simply read over it won't help you nearly as much as writing it out for yourself and seeing what happens to all the indices.

Honestly, OP, I'm kind of with you. Especially for math classes. I still find value in writing down formulas and key concepts, but I am on the verge of giving up writing down the example problems we are given in class. I always end up missing what the professor is saying/explaining because i'm too fucking busy trying to write out a bunch of shit that I'll never review.

That said, I am trying to take more meticulous notes in my chemistry class. My professor there has weekly quizzes specifically on lecture material and simply doing problems out of the book is not enough. He's really enforcing that you have to show up to lecture or else you wont pass. There's stuff you can only know if you went to lecture in that class.

In my biology class, everything is just memorization, so I take exhaustive notes. These notes then get re-written in a more readable format after class and what I end up with is about 5-10 pages of really concise notes explaining key concepts that end up on exams. Then I literally just re-read or rewrite them again until I know them all off the top of my head.

I have As in all my classes so far, though chemistry is kind of a bitch

I always write things down. It is impossible for me to remember something I haven't written down myself. I rarely ever reread my notes (I usually study using the professor's lecture notes if there are any) but it is important for me to write them down.
I did the whole "fuck this i'mma just focus real hard on the lecture" but, really I tended to forget it very quickly.
Not to say that you should write *everything* down (I do but it is more of a compulsive thing), but at least the definitions and the essential ideas and steps in proofs (try to sum them up).

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>Physics
>Professor has wrote brilliant notes uploaded them onto the Internet
>has recommended 6 books to choose the one you like best
>explicitly says that if it was up to him lectures wouldn't happen
>tells the class not to bother writing notes

Class literally sits there copying word for word what he puts on the board despite this

>>7915406

It helps you internalize the material and you can refer back to stuff the professor erased mid lecture if you need to quickly double check how he defined something.

>>7915604
>>7915595
>>7915498
>>7915490

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition

An interesting topic to read about if you're interested in breaking down the process by which humans acquire skills, if you're willing to think about a skill as a basic unit of intelligence.

>>7916655
http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~krasny/math156_crlt.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270048054_The_Effect_of_Note_Taking_Skills_Training_on_the_Academic_Self-Efficacy_of_Students

>Results: Findings showed that academic self-efficacy significantly increased after note-taking training in tested groups (P < 0.005). Moreover, the comparison of the two colleges showed that teaching these skills had a significant relationship with academic self-efficacy of students of the School of Health (P < 0.005), but no significant relationship was found with the students of the School of Literature and Humanities (P > 0.005).

>>7915406
>why not justify write down the relevant forumlas
>forumlas

Sorry, some of us actually do math and science, not use it as a tool we don't care to comprehend

I keep about 3 pages of front and back notes from every class in a binder in my bag. I can summarize almost any class into about that space and it serves as an amazing reference for building a strong foundation and not simoly forgetting that I learned X concept. When you start needing to use multiple branches of math at once, suddenly having detailed theorems from multiple subjects handy saves a lot of time.

Even though I almost never look at my notes, I think the process of writing things down makes me remember them more, because I have to think the words that I am writing in my head.

>>7915604
I remember those.

They were so tedious and awful that they made me never want to take notes.

>>7916532
wtf fuck is "brilliant" notes

>>7915453
>what is hyperbole

>>7915406
Notes aren't there for the student to look back on for the most part. In my experience, notes are just a mechanism that I use to put things into my long term memory due to the process of writing (and therefore manipulating) the information. Good for those bullshit memorization units, if you know what I mean

i write notes but i never use them.

~15% of what's said in lectures actually sticks to my brain. whenever a professor asks the students a question i can barely remember what topic we were on. other students can get it in like, 30 seconds. but i would have no idea where to even begin.

all of my learning is actually done at home. the only reason i go to lectures is because my psychologist told me that that's the only way for my anxiety to subside. and in the off chance that my professor tells the class something that he doesnt end up emailing later on.
with that said i do know that getting pre-exposed to material (even though you're not critically thinking about it) is really important for knowledge retention. so even though i have no idea whats going on, the fact that im writing it down and there is some muscle memory magic going on in my brain, helps.

for studying courses with a lot of reading, i use the pomodoro technique. 25 minutes of reading, 5 minutes of resting. repeat.
for studying courses with a lot of calculations, i go for the questions at the end of the chapter first. make sure im able to answer them. then go through the chapter to see how this connects with the material.

>>7916881
Well written notes on the lectures. He basically uses them to read from when lecturing, although the notes are actually more detailed. The class don't read em then complain when an exam comes up and "we didn't cover it" in lectures when the Professor even says that the notes are more complete than the lectures.

/rant over

>>7915490
>Writing things down offers another way to remember what you have learned. Has been shown to work better than typing too.
I think this is due to our elementary education. We were raised to write down notes in elementary school, so the information highway of a pen and paper is so much more stronger than anything else.

I'm interested to see a study on children who are completely immersed in technology from day 1 of elementary school. Where they're told to take notes on their tablet pc or laptop, and that carries through until senior year of high school. Then do the complementary study on them years later to see if students that were raised with a keyboard and took notes using a keyboard remembered things better than students that were raised with a keyboard but took notes with a pen and paper. Then compare those results with students that were raised with a pen and paper and took notes with a pen and paper, along with students that were raised with a pen and paper but took notes with a keyboard.

Slightly off topic, but I heard my cousin (he's 9) say that he hates writing things down with a pen or pencil because he could just use his iPad to type it in. Really interesting/strange.

>>7915406
Same here, but I take notes because it helps me pay more attention in class.

I write notes when doing homework and writting labs. I write everything down, but what sets me apart is that i actually read my notes every day.

>>7916963
I think its actually because you are hearing and seeing whats being instructed and then you repeat it in your own words on paper. So you recieve the information from the professor or material, then you reinterpret the information on paper. That repotition and reinterpretation encourages greater memorization and faster understanding.

>>7915406
For me, the act of taking the notes and prioritizing/reinforcing the essential bits of information is helpful to my learning process. At least I think it is. But I never reference my notes.

I know where definitions and key results are written in my notes with little remarks that I have during class. I can find this information much more quickly than opening a textbook, especially if it's a PDF.

>>7917003
But isn't that the same thing that's going on when typing? The only thing that's different is the medium which transfers it to a document. You're still reinterpretting info.

I suppose one argument in support of writing produces higher grades would be that you can only write something down at a certain speed (which is much slower than typing). So you are constantly repeating that single note down in your brain in order to remember it -- chopping it up, reorganizing it to make it much more easy to jot down. This is different than typing something up, which is much faster, which requires less note repetition, recall, and reorganization.

However, one downside to writing is that it's so slow that if your professor is a speed wizard, you could miss out on key points that a typer would pick up.

These speculations can vary greatly depending on the professor's lecture style. I've had numerous professors that used powerpoint slides and I would follow along, but I didn't learn a thing. I even recorded the guy's voice for reviewing after class, but nothing. At this point, maybe it is better to type up what the professor is saying. Other professors would use an overhead projector, whiteboard, or chalkboard and make notes. I suppose these are more suitable for writing.

I've never seen all that much point in taking notes. The books i've bought or gotten from the library encapsulate everything that I would write for notes, in a far more concise and clear way. I would essentially spend hours repeating what's already in a book 3 metres away from me. I don't see the point.

Writing and re-reading things is a terrible way to remember things and isn't how our brains evolved, mnemonics are far more effect for remembering information, you just have to be creative enough to think of solid ones.

>>7917003
I think its actually because writing requires concentration.

Typing is second nature, most people can do it atleast 50wpm without looking at the keyboard

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>>7915406
>That guy in class who takes notes in LaTeX

Ive asked the same thing, but if you write down notes during a lecture, you are going to be more focused on that subject specifically instead of doing other things. Writing things down also makes it easier to recall in m experience, and the people who dont take notes in my classes are the same people who fail exams.

>>7915406
it's not really necessary for calc, no

once you get to important classes though (in any subject, whether it's math, history, whatever) your professors aren't going to waste class time covering book material, or covering concepts you'd simply find in the course materials. they're usually going to move fast, too. especially in grad school

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>>7917421
hi

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>>7917421
>that guy in class

>>7915829
No you dont, because the pen/pencil is raping the paper and that will trigger everyone in the class

I write down key concepts or phrases that would start my train of thought - or remind me of that concept, it's important to write them specifically for yourself. They help with revising.

But mostly I agree, note taking is just a meme, to eat their own I guess.

>lecture begins with review
>the prof writes key formulas and theorems from last time for us to recall
>the very second the chalk touches the board you can hear every single one scraping it into their notebooks even though they have it already written down probably on the same fuckin page
>all of my rage

the entire system is BS, lectures should be recorded and put online

>>7915406
>all my classes were piss easy and I never reviewed any of my notes
>why do people take notes?

because there's harder classes which need you to review your notes constantly (which is much more practical than reviewing different books). It's nice to have things in your own notations, and sometimes (good) books for some topics, especially when you want them to cover your classes exactly, just don't exist for higher stuff.

>>7917421
fuck that guy

>>7915406
I used to commute to school and just took notes of the readings because I didn't want to lug my big ass textbooks to class
I noticed though it helped me remember and focus on the pertinent info by copying it down

>be in graduate algebraic geometry
>no lecture notes written by professor
>course is based on classes, doesn't follow any book

Yeah, could find it in Hartshorne but good luck with that