Life In 19x19

I don't know if a dedicated conversation has been held here before on this topic. If so, please link me to it.

I've been thinking and trying to come up with a single most efficient way of tracking my study of life and death. As I know it, reviewing problems that one has gotten wrong a number of times in a timed manner is ideal. This also leads to "hard-wiring" - a term that I've read elsewhere in L19.

The problem I face is that which comes from reading too many books at once. When I put one down for too long and try to come back to it, I lose track of the sense I had of how much of the book I've completed and I become extremely tempted to just start from the beginning again.

When you are studying Life and Death problems from a book, how do you keep track of your progress? Do you mark your attempts directly in the book? Do you date those attempts? Do you review the book in full afterward, pulling problems marked wrong, or do you keep a separate notebook? What do you write in that notebook?

I typically face the same problem, but in a few problem heavy books I have used some light pencil marks to indicate whether I got a problem I attempted right or wrong. This is a nice way to keep track of my progress, and I don't find it too distracting when I return to the book.

The simple answer is that I never did keep track. I just did the problems and then hopefully saw the results when I was able to apply them in a game. Bottom line is that it does not matter what happens during your study if you cannot apply it when it is needed.

I just thought of something else to add. I've recently been working through The Endgame by Tomoko Ogawa and James Davies. In chapter 2 of that book, there are a set of problems where the authors ask you to keep score by evaluating how many points each move is worth. Even though they provide space in the book to write your answers, I didn't want to ruin my ability to try the problems again on subsequent read-through. So I made a bookmark that allowed me to score the problems.

You could do something similar for life and death problems if you don't want to write in your books. You could even keep the bookmarks if you want to compare your performance on subsequent readings of the book.

If you want stuff repeated based on time, you can use Anki.

that's not how I do problems, though. I just start at the beginning and go through it. If a problem is too hard, I mean might told the page corner and move on.

@DrStraw: I've also done just this to get to 1D. I went through problem books and then promptly forget about them. When the goal is to get 95% right before moving on - which seems to be a key aspect of the training required to become a high dan player - then I need to find a way to effectively track and evaluate progress.

@jeromie: I appreciate you posting this bookmark! I remember studying my way through that chapter. I need to reread this book. I first read it when I was 20k and gained little from it. The second time I read it (SDK), it blew my mind. Maybe I can use this next time I read through it.

@Kirby: I like Anki, but I don't like the time requirement needed to build cards. More importantly, if my inherent problem is that I put books down for a time and then forget where I am with them, then forgetting to do Anki daily is going to put me in the same situation.

I have an idea of how I want to do this moving forward, but I want to see if anyone else has a systematic way that they study L&D.

Here's my idea.

Koosh wrote:@DrStraw: I've also done just this to get to 1D. I went through problem books and then promptly forget about them. When the goal is to get 95% right before moving on - which seems to be a key aspect of the training required to become a high dan player - then I need to find a way to effectively track and evaluate progress.

All I can say is that I got to 5 dan using the method. I guess it may not work for everyone.

Koosh wrote:{T}o get to 1D I went through problem books and then promptly forget about them. When the goal is to get 95% right before moving on - which seems to be a key aspect of the training required to become a high dan player - then I need to find a way to effectively track and evaluate progress.

If that is your goal you are not challenging yourself enough. A good time to move on is when you are getting more than 60% right.

OC, moving on does not mean that you do not continue to overlearn problems that you missed. Here is the overlearning approach that I use. To quote myself from another thread:

Bill Spight wrote:One learning technique that I used was overlearning, by solving problems that I had already solved. IIUC, spaced repetition is a form of overlearning.

The overlearning technique that I used works this way. Suppose that it takes N tries to a problem before success. After that you overlearn the problem by adding N/2 more successes. I kept track of successes by Xs and failures by check marks. (I also crossed through a check mark to make an X, after the first success.) Sometimes I waited so long between repetitions that I failed on problems that I had succeeded on before.

I don't understand the idea of getting only 60% right. If a problem is too hard for me, maybe I don't get the answer yet, but I don't somehow think the wrong answer is right (usually).

I would say that my accuracy rate is high for even difficult problems, because I don't think I'm done attempting before I have pretty high confidence that there are no refutations.

When you say 60% correct, do you mean that you never thought you had the answer for 40% of them?

I don't know about Bill, but I get problems wrong sometimes. This can be because of lazy reading (i.e. with more time or focus I would have realized my answer was wrong - I should eliminate these kinds of error, since they lead to lazy reading in games) or an honest oversight. It also occurs because I can have different aims with different problem sets: sometimes I practice exhaustive reading, and sometimes I work through problems to expose myself to new ideas. With the latter purpose, spending a large amount of time to make sure I have an individual problem correct can be counterproductive since I am exposed to fewer ideas.

Kirby wrote:I don't understand the idea of getting only 60% right. If a problem is too hard for me, maybe I don't get the answer yet, but I don't somehow think the wrong answer is right (usually).

I would say that my accuracy rate is high for even difficult problems, because I don't think I'm done attempting before I have pretty high confidence that there are no refutations.

When you say 60% correct, do you mean that you never thought you had the answer for 40% of them?

Give yourself a time limit.

jeromie wrote:I don't know about Bill, but I get problems wrong sometimes.

Me, too.

Hmm. I don't feel comfortable looking at the answer if I haven't solved it. Of course, I have no proof of the best method.

Kirby wrote:Hmm. I don't feel comfortable looking at the answer if I haven't solved it. Of course, I have no proof of the best method.

You don't have to look. If you have not solved the problem within the time limit, it counts as a failure.

Bill Spight wrote:
You don't have to look. If you have not solved the problem within the time limit, it counts as a failure.

Sure. That's what I meant when I was asking about this:

Kirby wrote: When you say 60% correct, do you mean that you never thought you had the answer for 40% of them?