Dealing with bad problems in spaced proof review
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Choosing the right problems is important if you want to make spaced proof review a habit. But what if you've added a bad problem? How do you deal with this? How do you recognize whether a problem is bad?
Recognizing bad problems
- problems that give you an "ugh" feeling are probably bad
Dealing with bad problems
- bury it
- if you keep burying it, suspend it using "@". Then later you can go examine it and decide what's wrong with it.
- if a problem has lots of fiddly details that are hard to get right on the spot, one idea is to make a card which just asks for the main idea, or asks you to draw the right picture (instead of doing all the calculations). If at some point in the future you start to doubt that you can actually do the proof, then that should give you enough motivation to actually attempt the proof. If you get stuck, that stuck point is a good thing to use as the front side of a card; make new cards when you get stuck.
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