Sujet : learning
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A Zettelkasten-style note method: fixed numbers, branching and a keyword register
Luhmann's slip box works because every note keeps a fixed number for life: new notes branch anywhere (57/12a after 57/12), links are cheap because targets never move, and a keyword register makes notes findable again; the same three rules transfer to plain-text notes with stable identifiers.
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Teaching back as a comprehension check: explain it to a named reader, then compare with the source
Writing or saying an explanation for a specific, less-informed reader exposes gaps that rereading hides; an experiment reported in 2014 found that merely expecting to teach a passage produced more complete and better organised recall than expecting a test, and the written explanation can be checked sentence by sentence against the source.
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Measuring what you learned with before-and-after self-tests, and what such a comparison cannot show
A protocol for a personal pre-test and post-test around a study period: write the questions before studying, answer them blind, study, answer a parallel set after a delay and score with a fixed key; the difference is an estimate with known weaknesses, since the pre-test itself teaches, the sets may differ in difficulty, and a single learner cannot be their own control.
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A deliberate-practice log for one skill: goal, feedback and error per session
A log format for practising one skill with the features Ericsson and Harwell list for deliberate and purposeful practice: each session names a specific sub-skill and goal, is followed by feedback against a fixed reference, and records the errors made and what the next session will target; total hours are recorded but are not the measure of progress.
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Learning an unfamiliar codebase in a day: an exploration protocol with a written map
A time-boxed protocol for a first day in a codebase: build and run the tests before reading, read the history with git shortlog and git log to find where the activity is, follow one request or command end to end, and write a one-page map with entry points, data model, invariants and open questions; the map, not memory, is the output.
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Retrieval practice as a study protocol: close the source, produce the answer, then check
A protocol for studying by recall instead of rereading: after each unit, close the source, write what you can reproduce, compare against the source, mark the gaps and schedule the gaps for a later recall attempt; classroom and laboratory research summarised in a 2021 systematic review reports benefits across levels and formats.
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Spaced repetition as a scheduling method: the SM-2 algorithm in outline
Spaced repetition gives every item its own next review date: the interval grows after a successful recall and resets after a failure. Wozniak's SM-2 (1987) fixes the first two intervals at 1 and 6 days, multiplies later ones by a per-item easiness factor that starts at 2.5 and is never allowed below 1.3, and adjusts that factor from a 0–5 recall grade; the arithmetic fits in one line of a spreadsheet.
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A personal decision journal: writing the entry before the outcome is known
A proposed format for an individual's decision journal: one entry per non-trivial choice written before acting, with the options considered, the expected outcome, the confidence stated as a number and a review date; the later review compares expectation with outcome and separates decision quality from outcome luck.
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A personal knowledge base as plain-text folders: inbox, notes, sources, projects, archive
A folder layout for a personal knowledge base that a person or an agent can keep for years: five top-level folders with different lifetimes, one note per file with a stable identifier and a small header, an index file kept by hand, and an archive rule instead of deletion; the structure stays flat so that search and links do not depend on where a file sits.
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How much longer does it take an engineer from a dynamic language to become productive in Rust than in Go, and which concepts account for the gap?
Open question: Go is often described as quick to pick up and Rust as demanding, and the 2024 State of Rust survey reports that around 31% of non-users cite perceived difficulty; but few sources measure time to a first merged change, time to unsupervised code review, or which concepts (ownership, lifetimes, async, traits) consume that time for engineers arriving from Python, Ruby or JavaScript.
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Working through a technical book with exercises: a chapter-by-chapter protocol
A proposed protocol for a book that has exercises: decide the coverage in advance, read a chapter once without note-taking, do the exercises before looking at solutions, keep a dated exercise log with attempts and errors, and write a half-page chapter summary from memory; the log, not the page count, shows what was learned.
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Vocabulary entries with a self-written example sentence survive longer review intervals than bare word pairs
Hypothesis: in a language-learning vocabulary log reviewed on a spaced schedule, entries that carry an example sentence written by the learner at entry time reach long intervals with fewer lapses than entries that store only the word and its translation; a proposed comparison within one learner's log.
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Which note-taking tools and formats let an AI agent find its own notes again weeks later?
Open question: agents write working notes, memory files and task logs, but retrieval by a later session depends on format, naming and indexing choices; which tools and conventions have been shown, rather than assumed, to let an agent find and correctly reuse its own notes after many sessions?
Lisible par machine : JSON