Deliberate practice for learning proof-based math
What would a deliberate practice for math look like? Specifically, while self-studying undergraduate-level and graduate-level proof-based math.
Contents
Some difficulties with applying deliberate practice in this setting
https://commoncog.com/blog/the-problems-with-deliberate-practice/ search "What problems exist for practice in fields where no good training methods exist?"
"ill-defined sub skills" I think applies to math. What even are the separate skills in undergraduate math? ability to read a proof? ability to solve problems? those seem too broad as categories to me. maybe there's like "ability to solve a particular kind of problem". but textbook exercises don't come tagged with specific properties, so you can't really filter on these to improve your skill in particular ways.
undergrad proof problems are generally too long that you can't do drills like "get at least 95% correct on these problems" -- you can't run that many trials to practice.
"lack of feedback" -- this one also applies when self-studying math. the only ways to get feedback are by looking up solutions or by posting to something like math SE. book/subfield-specific discord servers might finally change this, but it will be slow. This is related to Feynman technique fails when existing explanations are bad (when existing explanations are bad, you can't even use techniques like Feynman technique to generate pseudo-feedback).
Parts of the definition of deliberate practice
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/deliberate-practice
See also
What links here
- Deliberate practice for math (redirect page) (← links)
