How I Take Notes for Computer Science Classes in University

hey guys welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is aman i'm a student studying computer science

and economics and on this channel we explore different productivity and study techniques that you can use to achieve

your goals faster today we're going to talk about how i take notes for my computer science

classes in university along with some tips and tricks that i've picked up that you can use to

supercharge your computer science study routines timestamps are in the description below

let's go so there are two parts to learning anything the first part

is being able to understand the subject having the ability to put all the moving parts and pieces together

and really understand how everything works the second part is remembering your

understanding or what you learned down the line whether it's tomorrow the next week the next year or 10 years from

now it's all about remembering in the second part so if we apply this to a basic

mathematics example like algebra step one is actually understanding how algebra works

and step two is remembering how to do algebra for your test next week next month next year this video is going

to focus on the first part the memorization and retention techniques that i use will be explored

in a further video so at my university the computer science courses mainly focus on

two topics the first part is the theory or the higher level understanding of the subject this is

where we look at the background of how everything is used and it's a lot more conceptual

so if we were learning about arrays we probably have a diagram of an array where we talk about

how arrays work and the different methods that are associated with them it's all a very high level conceptual

point of view or if we were learning about sorting algorithms we would maybe discuss

several different algorithms and discuss why certain ones are faster or slower than

other ones in different scenarios it's more understanding rather than actually going in and writing code the second

part is the programming aspect where you actually go in and write the code

this is where you take everything you've learned in theory and apply to actual problems that you need to solve so for

my college we would get an assignment every week where we would have to use everything

we've learned over that semester and in the past and put it all together and tackle an

assignment we'd spend 5-10 hours on our own with a partner

really just putting our heads down and coding that's the programming aspect of computer science

both aspects are incredibly important to a computer science education right now we're going to talk about

theory because programming is really just practice so in this video we'll focus on

how you actually learn theory so let's talk about how i learned theory so usually

the day before or a little before a lecture on a new topic i like to crack out the textbook lecture

notes lecture slides basically any information i have before the lecture i like to open that

and take a look at that beforehand when i'm looking through those i like to take some notes

in a separate document to really put down my understanding and i'll talk about why i do this

so there's a methodology called the feynman technique this is a methodology that is named after

richard feynman he's a great physicist of our past and this method centers upon the idea

that if you can't really explain what you've learned

to another person you don't really understand it when i'm with my friends i'll often

practice by explaining to them but when you're by yourself you don't really have another person that you can

talk to and bounce ideas off of and that's where your notes come in handy when you write

something down you're forcing your mind to really contextualize it and

format it in a legible format so when you write it down it has to be readable it has to all flow and make sense

if you leave everything in your mind and you don't actually put anything down how do you know that you can explain it

to someone else that you actually understand it however if you can put it down in your

own words that's a great indicator that you have a good understanding

at least that initial understanding of the topic there's a really great quote by computer scientist nabil qureshi in

his essay about understanding where he says it's harder to fool yourself that you

understand something when you sit down to write about it and it comes out all disjointed and confused writing

forces clarity so that's why i always try to take some notes off to the side

so let's actually take some notes in real time so let's say that i have my textbook over here on the left

with a open text editor anyone would do fine on the right i basically just dug up a really old

notes document that i had when i first learned about arrays so we'll go through how i made that

why i made it like that and what each individual section means in white stare what i like to do

is i like to take this super dense textbook and reformat it kind of condense it down into my

own thoughts and make it a lot more readable in my notes document so as you can see right there there are

bullet points and it's just a lot easier to go through and understand

than the super dense textbook on the left so whenever i read a sentence or a line

that is new information i always decide to put that in a bullet and a fresh bullet if it's really

important then in that bullet point i try to rephrase it or

try to change it around i don't like to copy the exact definition down i want to sit down think about it for a

little bit and then put that new definition down so as you can see right here we have my definition of an

array i tried not to take the exact definition from the textbook on the left

i kind of just move some things around that forces you to think about it rather than just copying and pasting from the

textbook and if you're thinking about it then that's all about understanding

and the point of this exercise is to force your mind to think rather than just reading a textbook and

not really thinking about it or understanding it notice how i talked about how they are a

reference type variable at the time that was a concept i was struggling with a little bit

so even though that wasn't necessarily in the book i really thought about it and thought that was an important

concept to put down so don't let the book limit you whenever you have a question

or something you don't really understand use external resources and collect that information and then put your own

thought process down on the page so as you can see over here i have gone through this textbook and

really reformatted everything and put it down in my own words in a lot more legible

simple format what i always make sure to do is to put down some sort of examples

or case studies of whatever you're studying this is hugely important because there's a lot of evidence

that physical examples or visualizations of concepts are a lot easier to grasp or understand

faster rather than just looking at abstract definitions so

if i was doing these notes on paper i maybe would have drawn like a little box thing to represent an array so over here

i just put down a random example int with the brackets a just to represent

and kind of solidify what the syntax for declaring an array was another important aspect of picking

examples is you want to make sure that you can create your own examples

a lot of people what they'll do is they'll just go in the book and they'll just copy and paste the example in the

book and just because you can copy and paste the example doesn't mean you actually

understand it so it's a true sign that you understand something if you can create your own example for

that concept and then put that in your notes so notice how i have another example

there and another one down below i really stress the importance of examples when you're trying to learn some new

content so the third most important aspect of taking your preliminary notes is you want to make sure that you put

down any questions or misconceptions or concerns that you have over the topic

ideally you're taking these notes beforehand the day before the week before

and you haven't learned this new stuff so you're bound to have a ton of questions

and if you put those down you won't forget them and you can make sure to ask your teacher

during the lecture when that lecture comes up so that's what i do the day before the lecture i always make sure to

read through the textbook read through the lecture notes and create my own document where i'm reformatting and

trying to really understand the topics before the professor teaches me now let's talk about what i do during

the lecture so ideally during the lecture you'll have your notes open whether they're

handwritten or typed and the point of the lecture is to fill in any gaps that you had while doing

your self-learning now a lot of people complain about how professors aren't teaching you any

information that you can't learn yourself and i get this argument i mean you have

your textbook your notes you can get a pretty good understanding of the subject without the professor

however the professors have a level of experience and teaching skills that it's really impossible to get from a

textbook every professor brings their own unique outlook on a certain topic with

their own examples and own explanations so it's really important to pay attention during lecture

and put down any new or unique or novel examples or aspects of the topic that you didn't

see in your lecture notes that you didn't see in your textbook you want to consolidate

everything into this one master document if you did everything right your notes should have your own

rendition of the textbook information the lecture notes the lecture slides and the lecture itself

[Music] so now let's talk about what the goals and impact of the system is

why i decided to go with this system for my computer science classes and honestly most of my other classes

because it just works so well so this note-taking system produces two things one

it greatly increases your understanding and knowledge of a topic before a lecture

if you can force yourself to sit down and make yourself write out notes you are

making yourself slow down and really think about a topic and i find that in this day and age a

lot of us will tell ourselves oh we're studying but we don't really slow down enough and try to understand

it to a deep level the second impact of this note-taking system is that

at the end of lecture you have this beautiful master document with literally all the information from

that lecture all the information the lecture notes the textbook the slides everything is together here

and the effects of that are remarkable it's amazing to have one document where you have everything

from all the different aspects of the topic all the different places consolidated into

one place it's a great study aid so those are the methods that i use to take notes for my computer science

classes before and during lecture in the next video we'll talk about exactly what i do

after lecture to practice my notes and make sure that i actually remember what i've learned for the test

so that's all for this video but before you go i'd like to ask you to check out skillshare.com

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