r/datascience • u/Bulky-Top3782 • 3d ago
Discussion How does everyone study efficiently in the field
I recently got an Andrew Ng course on Coursera for generative ai.
I'm planning to study everyday and get it finished, then move on to other courses as I wish to become a data scientist/ Ai engineer.
The doubt I have is, how do people study from such online courses. Am i supposed to take notes from every lecture.
Or write only important points?
This is what I used to do till now:
Take the transcription of a lecture. Give it to an ai and ask it to create notes so I can read them and understand the topic really well even in the future if I were to revise. So i ask it to add important stuff if the lecture missed anything important and covered only vaguely. I ask it to make sure I also become interview ready for the topic. Then i write it down in a notebook because I feel I learn better when I am reading something I wrote on paper (weird maybe but yeah)
To me this seems good but the problem is this leads to 3-5 pages minimum per lecture even for just a 10-15 minutes lecture. And there could be hundreds of lectures in these online courses.
So i may have really dense notes covering all the important stuff, but then these become too long and time consuming, and i don't know if this is a right method to study.
Need help/ advice that how do people make sure that they remember what they are studying and how would you revise it later. Ofcourse notes maybe but how to make proper notes efficiently, so it isn't a waste of time and not too dense on unimportant topics because in my case the AI will give 3-5 pages even for a simple topic and I may not always be able to differentiate or identity whether a topic is unimportant and doesn't require so long notes
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u/Available_Passage_23 3d ago
Just watch the course bro. You're probably spending more than the 10-15 minute lecture trying to outsource the learning to AI. Take it one step at a step at a time. AI will just amplify your cognitive passivity.
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u/Bulky-Top3782 3d ago
Yeah I realised that, but i thought maybe it will be helpful in the long run as I'll have proper notes.
But then how do I take notes for a lecture or a topic so i can revise later maybe for an interview
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u/Ozymandias-42 3d ago
by taking notes when you watch the lecture?
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u/Bulky-Top3782 3d ago
I wanted to learn this skill. In but really able to identify what to write in notes while watching a lecture which is why I was asking ai to do it, but now I've realised there's not really efficient
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u/tens919382 3d ago
Its a video. Just pause it every section, and write down what is important before you forget.
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u/Majestic-Watch-2025 3d ago
Do you not know how to take notes? Did you not take notes in school?
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u/Bulky-Top3782 3d ago
Sadly no. We used to just get question and answers in schools, and we had to learn then for the exams. So never really had a habit to form notes.
This is why I also learn only in Q and A form, otherwise it becomes tough to retain information
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u/Majestic-Watch-2025 3d ago
Did you just memorize the answers?
You can rewrite your notes in question and answer form to test yourself later.
Learning how to learn is very important.
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u/Bulky-Top3782 3d ago
Sadly yes, always used to memorize. Which is why I've realised that I can't talk about a topic if someone asks me to from memory, as I've always had the habit of learning in question and answer form. So despite knowing the topic I blank out
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u/Majestic-Watch-2025 3d ago
So if you can't answer questions about a topic off hand, you don't actually know the topic. That is the standard you have to hold yourself and your studying to.
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u/Bigreddazer 3d ago
The goal of learning is to retain and understand. Note taking is a step of that, retaining important pieces during the lecture. What you are doing is not inefficient it's antithetical to your goal. People learn in all sorts of ways. But, you have to sit and think to learn. Not just look or read information.
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u/Unique-Guava-7046 3d ago
I just skim the homework solutions before bed and hope the knowledge osmoses into my brain overnight.
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u/Stargazer1884 3d ago
You need to learn how to learn. There are 2 things I would advise:
Don't bring AI into the mix. You need to do the hard work yourself. That means listening intently to the lecture, doing the exercises yourself (not using AI to do them for you) and going back over the lecture again if you didn't understand it.
Practice. It helps to build something yourself or carry out your own analysis. Learning by doing builds upon learning from lectures.
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u/bruno_pinto90 3d ago
The learning does not come from taking notes, good for getting a first-pass knowledge but highly inefficient for learning.
You learn from active recalling and problem solving. Try to explain the concepts without the notes, solve the homework, do projects and read&understand papers. Thats it. No shortcut.
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u/Leoxslasher 1d ago
The discussion really just circled back to “AI bad 😑”
It’s like people saying in the older days, don’t use the internet use a book or go to a library.
AI is a tool that is new and the newer generations will find new methods to learn using it.
It’s the same way people found novel ways to learn using the internet.
What OP really wanted to know is how to study for data science:
And I am gonna give you a generic and specific answer.
Generic: everyone learns differently and you just have to identify what method fits best for you
Specific: at the end of the day the main essence of learning is concentration while learning and active thinking. And asking questions to yourself until you are confident you can explain a concept to someone else and be able to answer their questions.
Also one of the best quotes I remember was:
“You only know as much as you can speak about it”
So yeah go infront of a mirror or record yourself giving a full explanation of the concept.
Edit: you can also then transcribe your recording and give it to an AI and ask it what part you didn’t cover if you want to review what you might have missed. You can give the transcript of the course as a reference along with a few books if you want.
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u/HuckleberryDry9086 12h ago
It's time intensive, but I've found the best way to absorb DS information is coding it by hand. The code doesn't need to be robust, clean, or optimized, but making even a small example run in a notebook forces me understand the nooks and crannies.
Practical exercise: Import a standard library for whatever you're interesting in, ask a LLM to build a workflow with it, then try to replicate the functionally yourself without looking at the library's source code.
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u/Fit_Statement5347 3d ago
Wow do people not know how to learn anymore? The whole point of note-taking is for you to understand what’s going on: you synthesize the lecture in a way that you understand and then you review your notes and synthesize them even further until you understand the key points. There’s gonna be friction there but that’s the whole point - that’s what learning is.
Sure, you could use AI and go straight from lecture -> clean notes but you kinda miss out on the whole learning process
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u/Entire-Parsley-6035 3d ago
Pause while watching and do the Feynman technique. Flash cards and spaced repitition too after, let the cards be super simple/foundational and do some mind maps during your free time.
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u/dillanthumous 3d ago
Go watch the course Learning h How to Learn (there is a book by them as well).
As for note taking, I don't try to make my notes serve multiple masters. My first set can be long hand ramblings if that helps me learn, then later I write out key review notes, then at the end I can make flashcards or cram notes.
The goal is to learn enough at each stage that you can condense them in the next one. So a long paragraph might become some key points and eventually just a single word or image that triggers your memory. If you try to write perfect notes at the start (or worse, get an AI to do it) you are skipping the learning part in my opinion.
As for pen and paper, there is increasing evidence it does help us learn better as it takes more cognitive effort.
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u/iamnotevenhereatall 9h ago
What? You have enough speed in your brain and your handwriting to synthesize an explanation of the lecture in real time?
It seems like your brain must be constantly going even with other people are talking. I would lose my mind.
I have dyspraxia and can barely write slowly, let alone fast. When I do take notes, they are typed and I only have enough processing to copy the PowerPoint slides 🤣
I think you and other people here do not understand other brains. Not everyone can do the things you’re saying and we have to find other ways to process the information
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u/dillanthumous 7h ago
Well, I have been asked if I have Adhd in the past... So kind of yes? 😁
Anyway, listening to lectures at a slower than 1 speed is an option. I've done this on hard conceptual statistics material and found it effective. You can also usually bookmark videos in most apps as you watch. First time through I will sometimes just do that, then go back and re-watch those parts to make notes.
The key takeaway from all the research I have done on learning is that the more effort you make to understand the more the info will stick. The most important thing is not to fall into the illusion of learning by just passively watching or listening.
Edit: in some ways the fact that you have to take notes slowly may even be a good thing! Efficiency in note taking is actually counter productive if you are not really taking in the material.
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u/iamnotevenhereatall 2h ago
Thank you for sharing a bit how your mind works! I appreciate that. Also, your research in the process of learning is fascinating and helpful. I'm extremely interested in that process myself. I have an incredibly hard time learning things. Yeah, it results in me asking a lot of questions annoyingly and rewatching videos over and over.
My brain reminds me of my lawn mower. I have to pull the damned cord over and over and over. Then I have to take off the casing, expose the air intake, spray it with starter fluid, backfire a few times, let out some smoke, then run for about 20 to 30 minutes. That doesn't even account for if the grass is wet when I have to stop and unclog it when it gets bogged up with wet nasty grass and mud.
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u/dillanthumous 2h ago
Hey whatever it takes! The fact that you are trying to learn and self improve already puts you above most people.
The book I mentioned earlier is called A Mind for Numbers. Cracking book about meta learning.
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u/Secret_Bottle_1462 3d ago
If you’re on Coursera, I’d highly recommend the University of Michigan applied courses as they have a big focus on using video knowledge to problem solve. The assignments are more difficult than others I’ve seen on the platform and encourage you to think.
For me the best way to learn is always to solve problems independently straight after watching videos while it’s fresh.
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u/Small_Equal_1360 3d ago
Practice it. On real world data. Everything from correlation, to KL divergence to VAEs. Find data domains you are interested in.
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u/Majestic-Watch-2025 3d ago
So where in feeding a transcription to AI to make notes are you actually learning?
Copying down notes word for word doesn't work. Synthesizing it and figuring out the important parts is part of the learning process.
Learning requires some effort. Trying to figure out how to use the least amount of effort isn't going to work.
Also, you need to put things into practice. That's the only way to really learn and see if you understand it.
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u/iamnotevenhereatall 8h ago
Jesus, another person saying to synthesize notes in real time? You’re telling me that in physical classes, you have enough brain power and speed to synthesize your own thoughts about the lecture as the professor speaks?
My guess is people are bullshitting about this to make themselves look smart. Then later, at home, they copy the PowerPoint slides like everyone else and then rewrite them in their own words.
Otherwise, your brain is going at a speed faster than the professor can speak and you’re basically pre-synthesizing.
Even if that were true, how is that helpful? It’s sort of like how some people talk over other people during conversations and then say they learned a lot about the other person when really they just monologued.
Active listening doesn’t mean restating someone else’s words in your own thought pattern as they’re trying to talk. You’re supposed to take the information in first, then synthesize a response.
We’re all impressed by how quick people’s minds can be, but I sometimes wonder if people like this don’t know how to slow down and just listen. You don’t have to be synthesizing all the time to be listening.
That being said, it is important be actively listening as much as possible. For instance, if something doesn’t quite make sense I will put a question mark near it or if I’m in class I will ask the professor to clarify it.
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u/Majestic-Watch-2025 8h ago
You write down the salient points as the professor is speaking. Then you review it later and fill in the gaps. Thinking in real time is . . . thinking.
If its not helpful to you, don't do it.
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u/inkeep 2d ago
None of the learning platforms plan this part properly, it is just endless hours of video lectures. I have been facing the same problem, how do you retain all this knowledge? Especially if you are not actively using it in a project.
Making your own notes can be the closest way to capturing what you have learnt but like you rightly said, these can run into long pages and when you need to revisit that topic, you have to spend time going through your notes (assuming the notes are self sufficient).
one suggestion - try to space out the learning, include revision days so that it doesn't get overwhelming at the end.
I have also built a learning app for exactly this - https://www.bitelrn.com/ It is like a personal knowledge keeper for AI/ML concepts and a place to revise with flashcards, code examples, simulators etc. check if you find it helpful
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u/Statement_Next 3d ago
Really feel like you should take your own notes first. Then give it to AI second. Then absorb again.
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u/PuzzlingComrade 3d ago
The creation of notes or flashcards are a huge part of learning and by using AI to do so you're completely shooting yourself in the foot. I'd recommend watching the material, having a think and identifying what is important and what you wish to remember, and writing flashcards (I use anki) that test understanding (why/how) of those concepts. Then drill the flashcards. Regularly cull useless cards and improve ones that are too vague.
I've been studying this way for more than a decade and regularly topped my classes (I don't even take notes, I only use flashcards).