8 ms·

The Cornell Note-Taking System

KomradeKeeks 7y ago
'15 here I remember having these notes ingrained into my brain in middle school; at Ithaca, I didn't know a single person who actively used Cornell notes for note taking. That said, actively engaging and re-engaging with content will help you build better internal bodies of knowledge on the subject, so you'll retain the content long after prelims and finals.
- rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
  Same here. Ithaca schools are just soooo proud of the Cornell note taking system they taught it to us as if it was eternal and essential, but ultimately useless, just like cursive. I also went to Cornell and never saw it used or mentioned once.
  - arh68 7y ago
    Same! '11, never saw a single person use it. Old prelims > graded psets > notes, to me anyways.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  I remember those back in middle school. My history teacher beat on us relentlessly to do them, to the point of having large stacks of paper with lines down the middle in the room and handing out bundles of the same at regular intervals. No one did it unless she was checking for a grade, which was infrequent. I did well in the class, and neither I nor the other A students took notes this way. Just sometimes wrote in the margins like normal people, or underlined something important, then put these into separate documents. Having a sheet of the synthesized "metadata" (dates, contextual bits, etc.) was much more useful than having to page through to get at the information.
tra3 7y ago
Any tips for taking meeting notes specifically?
- lowdose 7y ago
  Record everything, ML multi-speaker speech-to-text every conversation. Plug text input into company search engine. Radical transparency by giving everybody access to this interface. Awesome bullshit filter.
  - andrewSC 7y ago
    > ML multi-speaker speech-to-text every conversation I honestly love this idea. Any suggestions on what FOSS tooling to use for said speech-to-text that's reasonably accurate? Or is training the ML the "heavy lift" of this setup?
    - lowdose 7y ago
      Google has an API for this. Speech is a thing you really need big data for and thus IMO not suitable for FOSS. Why bother with setting up the whole custom data pipeline when plug-and-play is available for a fraction of the cost. https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/ https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/
  - artimaeis 7y ago
    > ML multi-speaker speech-to-text every conversation Neat idea, do you know of any software that's capable of taking an audio file and producing multi-user text from it? Seems like it would be useful in a wide variety of situations.
    - lowdose 7y ago
      Google Speech API see other comment for link has speaker diarization in beta i.e automatic predictions about which of the speakers in a conversation spoke. On top of this you can add 5000 names for company specific entity recognition for product, people, brand names etc. 120 different languages are supported.
llamaz 7y ago
I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important information in finer detail. Contrary to what you might think, this method is especially useful for really difficult concepts (e.g. in math and physics). Sometimes you sit through a lecture and have no idea what's going on until you start doing the exercises. In these cases you might have to use memory as a crutch, to try to memorize the main ideas (or useful facts) to create the scaffold which you fill in later.
- SpaceManNabs 7y ago
  I used Anki for my ML grad (wish I did for undergrad). Formed a card for each subproblem of a problem in a pset, theorem, lemma, general concept, and definition---and for each of these things, using the 20 rules of learning from supermemo (? i think). I also used it for easily grokked things that I wanted to make a habit. Made a deck for each class, and also made a deck for talks and seminars I visited, grouped by semester. Super useful. I feel like I don't really forget the majority of the vibes like I did for my astro undergrad. I remember GR a lot less than convex opt even though I spent many more hours of rigorous study and even though I revisited my GR material more. Revisiting my astro notes is still effective for those little details, but getting all the context into my working memory is much more exhausting.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  They tried to get us to take Cornell notes back in high school. I think they can work for some people, but I found that it created too much mental overhead. Seemed to turn me into more of a recording device than a mind comprehending a lecture. The note-taking style seems to assume a certain format of lecture, and if a teacher deviates from that then it can be more confusing than simply taking notes without the extra columns and cells. That said, I think it's a good idea, but might not be for everyone. Kind of like how there are different apps like Notion, Trello, Quip, OneNote, etc., and while Notion works for a lot of people, some people benefit more from Trello's boards and cards.
0kl 7y ago
If anyone else is interested in research on note taking, this is a survey of the research with citations: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/note-taking https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/note-taking Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there’s been as much research on specific methodologies (e.g. Cornell method), but it may also be the case that the methodology doesn’t matter at all, only that the strategies are employed. I’m surprised it doesn’t mention the encoding and external storage paradigm, but https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/node/31875 https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/node/31875 has some additional context for anyone that wants some vocabulary and a very short “methods” and “strategies” document.
- btrettel 7y ago
  > Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there’s been as much research on specific methodologies (e.g. Cornell method), but it may also be the case that the methodology doesn’t matter at all, only that the strategies are employed. I recall that in the book Your Memory by Ken Higbee he said that various study/notetaking methods don't differ much and just combine strategies that are known to work. So he picked a popular system to recommend to readers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R You can immediately see similarities between SQ3R and Cornell Notes.
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    I've heard both teachers and education researchers argue that once you understand an idea and represent it competently, repeated exposure is the only thing that matters for learning. If people who are using a specific technique get better results, it's probably just survivorship bias, because everything in education is survivorship bias. Even if people who adopt the technique all do well, it's probably just selection bias on the sort of people who seek out new study techniques. And if you teach it to students and they improve, it's probably still the Hawthorne effect, with novelty and optimism meaning it gets used more consistently at first. There are a few pretty miraculous results, but they're mostly on memorizing lots of completely arbitrary info (e.g. memory palaces). Outside of that, it seems like picking anything easy to use and being consistent is the winning approach. (I'd allow a special exception for things like Anki: if one tool supports data relationships another doesn't, it can obviously be better for learning that sort of content.)
dhimes 7y ago
The conversation here from about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21674946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21674946
Dirlewanger 7y ago
I imagine this would be OK for a structured maths class, but not for a weekly 3 hour history seminar where the professor pontificates non-stop for the entire time...
- criddell 7y ago
  What's a better way to take notes for that case?
nradov 7y ago
I question the value of taking notes at all. Of course different people learn in different ways, and I'm sure some students can benefit from taking notes. But for me the process of note taking is too distracting. Better to just focus on the lecturer and really listen. Then maybe write a few short notes afterwards for points not adequately covered in the assigned text.
- atoav 7y ago
  I don’t see a contradiction there. As you said: differnt people learn in different ways. Just speaking for myself, but I can concentrate more if I take notes and not less (unless the thing is very visual in nature).
  - jldugger 7y ago
    There is probably a value in taking notes after a lecture -- repetition and recall is a strong component in memory formation.
    - ska 7y ago
      In my experience (on both sides of the lectern) there is even more value in taking a few before the lecture. With typical lecture structure, you get a little review tying in the last subject(s), a little bookkeeping/admin (next week we will...) and then a new topic or topics, followed by some synthesis. If you've had a quick look at the new topic already, you'll know where your understanding is good and where it isn't. You can pay attention to the right bits, and ask questions if needed. Review afterward is very useful, but probably more topic-by-topic not lecture-by-lecture. After the lecture you add that material to your ongoing review.
      - jldugger 7y ago
        You're not wrong. I just finished reading "Make It Stick" which covers these topics and one of the many examples from college lectures is a student who was doing the readings before the lectures. As you point out, asking questions is useful, and trying to answer them yourself first is even more so. One student classification researchers have identified is rule vs example learners. Rule based learners seek out rules to learn something, while example learners typically try to memorize examples. Rule based learners tend to do better in scholarly tasks / exams. However, example based learners can be taught to be more like rule based learners with a few hacks: prompt them to compare different examples, instead of reviewing one example at a time, inserting questions into the marginalia / chapter headers, etc.
DailyHN 7y ago
GTD turned me on to notecards. I can't imagine going back. No matter how you want to organize the important stuff, the ephemeral nature of 3x5 notecards helps me get more ideas out of my head than ever before. "Your brain is for having ideas, not remembering them."
- Multiplayer 7y ago
  What do you do with the note cards? I love note cards, but now I just have stacks of them filling boxes.
  - PTOB 7y ago
    I have the same question.
    - DailyHN 7y ago
      #1 Don't plan on saving the notecards forever. Put them in an inbox immediately after writing on the notecard. At a predetermined time, manage the inbox. Some of my notecards get stored into folders created for current projects. These folders can be digitized at a later date for archiving and searching. Though, most notecards don't make it that far. Some notecards represent tasks. Those get recycled as soon as they are completed. Many notecards head straight to the recycling bin. You'd be surprised how often something seems like a good idea before you write it down. Most of my process follows the "Getting Things Done"(GTD) framework by David Allen. I highly recommend it.
  - kd5bjo 7y ago
    Write the topic of the note on the index line, and store them sorted. If a card connects multiple topics, pick one and make cross-reference cards that point to the topic with the actual note. The act of filing new notes will force you to at least glance at your old ones, which can generate serendipitous mental connections. You'll also see when you have multiple cards covering the same topic, which helps to link disparate facts about the same thing together in your head.
vsyu 7y ago
It can be helpful to have a structured system of note-taking that you can modify so that it's customized to your needs and becomes most effective for how you learn.
orbitmech 7y ago
Yes
neodymiumphish 7y ago
I've been in law enforcement for about 5 years now, the first 3 of which were spent entirely on felony-level criminal investigations. They teach a great deal at the federal courses on how to conduct interviews of Suspects, Victims, and Witnesses, but almost nothing is detailed on how to take notes. When I conducted these interviews (especially ones that aren't recorded or when I'm unlikely to have a chance to re-interview someone, such as with Suspects and Victims), I found that I really needed a methodology of note-taking that allowed me to set aside questions to ask when the time was right. For example, if a sexual assault victim is describing the events that led up to the assault, and mentioned that the suspect sent a message from his phone just before doing something else, I would want to know (to the best of her knowledge) what type of phone it was, but I'm not going to stop her in the middle of telling me the story just to ask that question. Interestingly, I basically started doing something extremely similar to this system (although, apparently backwards). My notes always included a line separating my main notes on the left from my key details and questions on the right, with the right column only about 3" wide. Ordinarily, I would leave 2 or 3 blank lines after each question so I could fill in the answer the interviewee provided and it reminded me to look for any blank space on my notepad before ending an interview (or, in the case of suspects, before asking more direct questions that may lead to suspect to end the interview before I got the chance to get answers to more minor questions). Ofter, my "summary" section would be extremely short and just describe larger timeline changes, like if a report spans multiple days or locations, I would mark the end of one incident in the bottom few lines of the page and jump to a new page to take notes about the next incident. I'm very curious if this methodology is used by a lot of others as well (especially in law enforcement), or if I just happened to find one with remarkable similarity to Cornell's.
sakras 7y ago
They made us on several different occasions take Cornell notes saying they'd help us learn. Supposedly there were numerous studies saying that students that used them succeeded. I HATED taking these notes - it just makes more sense to me to format things as a textbook-writer would. I think of my notebooks as mini-textbooks. On a more general note, I've noticed throughout my undergrad experience that whenever some lecturer/Professor/TA comes up and says they read a study about "evidence-based learning" and that this method will help us learn 10x better, they're full of shit. I want nothing more than to take notes however I want, to a lecture.

'15 here I remember having these notes ingrained into my brain in middle school; at Ithaca, I didn't know a single person who actively used Cornell notes for note taking. That said, actively engaging and re-engaging with content will help you build better internal bodies of knowledge on the subject, so you'll retain the content long after prelims and finals.

rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
Same here. Ithaca schools are just soooo proud of the Cornell note taking system they taught it to us as if it was eternal and essential, but ultimately useless, just like cursive. I also went to Cornell and never saw it used or mentioned once.
- arh68 7y ago
  Same! '11, never saw a single person use it. Old prelims > graded psets > notes, to me anyways.
big_chungus 7y ago
I remember those back in middle school. My history teacher beat on us relentlessly to do them, to the point of having large stacks of paper with lines down the middle in the room and handing out bundles of the same at regular intervals. No one did it unless she was checking for a grade, which was infrequent. I did well in the class, and neither I nor the other A students took notes this way. Just sometimes wrote in the margins like normal people, or underlined something important, then put these into separate documents. Having a sheet of the synthesized "metadata" (dates, contextual bits, etc.) was much more useful than having to page through to get at the information.

tra3 7y ago

Any tips for taking meeting notes specifically?

lowdose 7y ago
Record everything, ML multi-speaker speech-to-text every conversation. Plug text input into company search engine. Radical transparency by giving everybody access to this interface. Awesome bullshit filter.
- andrewSC 7y ago
  > ML multi-speaker speech-to-text every conversation I honestly love this idea. Any suggestions on what FOSS tooling to use for said speech-to-text that's reasonably accurate? Or is training the ML the "heavy lift" of this setup?
  - lowdose 7y ago
    Google has an API for this. Speech is a thing you really need big data for and thus IMO not suitable for FOSS. Why bother with setting up the whole custom data pipeline when plug-and-play is available for a fraction of the cost. https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/ https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/
- artimaeis 7y ago
  > ML multi-speaker speech-to-text every conversation Neat idea, do you know of any software that's capable of taking an audio file and producing multi-user text from it? Seems like it would be useful in a wide variety of situations.
  - lowdose 7y ago
    Google Speech API see other comment for link has speaker diarization in beta i.e automatic predictions about which of the speakers in a conversation spoke. On top of this you can add 5000 names for company specific entity recognition for product, people, brand names etc. 120 different languages are supported.

llamaz 7y ago

I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important information in finer detail. Contrary to what you might think, this method is especially useful for really difficult concepts (e.g. in math and physics). Sometimes you sit through a lecture and have no idea what's going on until you start doing the exercises. In these cases you might have to use memory as a crutch, to try to memorize the main ideas (or useful facts) to create the scaffold which you fill in later.

SpaceManNabs 7y ago
I used Anki for my ML grad (wish I did for undergrad). Formed a card for each subproblem of a problem in a pset, theorem, lemma, general concept, and definition---and for each of these things, using the 20 rules of learning from supermemo (? i think). I also used it for easily grokked things that I wanted to make a habit. Made a deck for each class, and also made a deck for talks and seminars I visited, grouped by semester. Super useful. I feel like I don't really forget the majority of the vibes like I did for my astro undergrad. I remember GR a lot less than convex opt even though I spent many more hours of rigorous study and even though I revisited my GR material more. Revisiting my astro notes is still effective for those little details, but getting all the context into my working memory is much more exhausting.
ravenstine 7y ago
They tried to get us to take Cornell notes back in high school. I think they can work for some people, but I found that it created too much mental overhead. Seemed to turn me into more of a recording device than a mind comprehending a lecture. The note-taking style seems to assume a certain format of lecture, and if a teacher deviates from that then it can be more confusing than simply taking notes without the extra columns and cells. That said, I think it's a good idea, but might not be for everyone. Kind of like how there are different apps like Notion, Trello, Quip, OneNote, etc., and while Notion works for a lot of people, some people benefit more from Trello's boards and cards.

0kl 7y ago

If anyone else is interested in research on note taking, this is a survey of the research with citations: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/note-taking https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/note-taking Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there’s been as much research on specific methodologies (e.g. Cornell method), but it may also be the case that the methodology doesn’t matter at all, only that the strategies are employed. I’m surprised it doesn’t mention the encoding and external storage paradigm, but https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/node/31875 https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/node/31875 has some additional context for anyone that wants some vocabulary and a very short “methods” and “strategies” document.

btrettel 7y ago
> Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there’s been as much research on specific methodologies (e.g. Cornell method), but it may also be the case that the methodology doesn’t matter at all, only that the strategies are employed. I recall that in the book Your Memory by Ken Higbee he said that various study/notetaking methods don't differ much and just combine strategies that are known to work. So he picked a popular system to recommend to readers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R You can immediately see similarities between SQ3R and Cornell Notes.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  I've heard both teachers and education researchers argue that once you understand an idea and represent it competently, repeated exposure is the only thing that matters for learning. If people who are using a specific technique get better results, it's probably just survivorship bias, because everything in education is survivorship bias. Even if people who adopt the technique all do well, it's probably just selection bias on the sort of people who seek out new study techniques. And if you teach it to students and they improve, it's probably still the Hawthorne effect, with novelty and optimism meaning it gets used more consistently at first. There are a few pretty miraculous results, but they're mostly on memorizing lots of completely arbitrary info (e.g. memory palaces). Outside of that, it seems like picking anything easy to use and being consistent is the winning approach. (I'd allow a special exception for things like Anki: if one tool supports data relationships another doesn't, it can obviously be better for learning that sort of content.)

dhimes 7y ago

The conversation here from about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21674946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21674946

Dirlewanger 7y ago

I imagine this would be OK for a structured maths class, but not for a weekly 3 hour history seminar where the professor pontificates non-stop for the entire time...

criddell 7y ago
What's a better way to take notes for that case?

nradov 7y ago

I question the value of taking notes at all. Of course different people learn in different ways, and I'm sure some students can benefit from taking notes. But for me the process of note taking is too distracting. Better to just focus on the lecturer and really listen. Then maybe write a few short notes afterwards for points not adequately covered in the assigned text.

atoav 7y ago
I don’t see a contradiction there. As you said: differnt people learn in different ways. Just speaking for myself, but I can concentrate more if I take notes and not less (unless the thing is very visual in nature).
- jldugger 7y ago
  There is probably a value in taking notes after a lecture -- repetition and recall is a strong component in memory formation.
  - ska 7y ago
    In my experience (on both sides of the lectern) there is even more value in taking a few before the lecture. With typical lecture structure, you get a little review tying in the last subject(s), a little bookkeeping/admin (next week we will...) and then a new topic or topics, followed by some synthesis. If you've had a quick look at the new topic already, you'll know where your understanding is good and where it isn't. You can pay attention to the right bits, and ask questions if needed. Review afterward is very useful, but probably more topic-by-topic not lecture-by-lecture. After the lecture you add that material to your ongoing review.
    - jldugger 7y ago
      You're not wrong. I just finished reading "Make It Stick" which covers these topics and one of the many examples from college lectures is a student who was doing the readings before the lectures. As you point out, asking questions is useful, and trying to answer them yourself first is even more so. One student classification researchers have identified is rule vs example learners. Rule based learners seek out rules to learn something, while example learners typically try to memorize examples. Rule based learners tend to do better in scholarly tasks / exams. However, example based learners can be taught to be more like rule based learners with a few hacks: prompt them to compare different examples, instead of reviewing one example at a time, inserting questions into the marginalia / chapter headers, etc.

DailyHN 7y ago

GTD turned me on to notecards. I can't imagine going back. No matter how you want to organize the important stuff, the ephemeral nature of 3x5 notecards helps me get more ideas out of my head than ever before. "Your brain is for having ideas, not remembering them."

Multiplayer 7y ago
What do you do with the note cards? I love note cards, but now I just have stacks of them filling boxes.
- PTOB 7y ago
  I have the same question.
  - DailyHN 7y ago
    #1 Don't plan on saving the notecards forever. Put them in an inbox immediately after writing on the notecard. At a predetermined time, manage the inbox. Some of my notecards get stored into folders created for current projects. These folders can be digitized at a later date for archiving and searching. Though, most notecards don't make it that far. Some notecards represent tasks. Those get recycled as soon as they are completed. Many notecards head straight to the recycling bin. You'd be surprised how often something seems like a good idea before you write it down. Most of my process follows the "Getting Things Done"(GTD) framework by David Allen. I highly recommend it.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  Write the topic of the note on the index line, and store them sorted. If a card connects multiple topics, pick one and make cross-reference cards that point to the topic with the actual note. The act of filing new notes will force you to at least glance at your old ones, which can generate serendipitous mental connections. You'll also see when you have multiple cards covering the same topic, which helps to link disparate facts about the same thing together in your head.

vsyu 7y ago

It can be helpful to have a structured system of note-taking that you can modify so that it's customized to your needs and becomes most effective for how you learn.

orbitmech 7y ago

Yes

neodymiumphish 7y ago

I've been in law enforcement for about 5 years now, the first 3 of which were spent entirely on felony-level criminal investigations. They teach a great deal at the federal courses on how to conduct interviews of Suspects, Victims, and Witnesses, but almost nothing is detailed on how to take notes. When I conducted these interviews (especially ones that aren't recorded or when I'm unlikely to have a chance to re-interview someone, such as with Suspects and Victims), I found that I really needed a methodology of note-taking that allowed me to set aside questions to ask when the time was right. For example, if a sexual assault victim is describing the events that led up to the assault, and mentioned that the suspect sent a message from his phone just before doing something else, I would want to know (to the best of her knowledge) what type of phone it was, but I'm not going to stop her in the middle of telling me the story just to ask that question. Interestingly, I basically started doing something extremely similar to this system (although, apparently backwards). My notes always included a line separating my main notes on the left from my key details and questions on the right, with the right column only about 3" wide. Ordinarily, I would leave 2 or 3 blank lines after each question so I could fill in the answer the interviewee provided and it reminded me to look for any blank space on my notepad before ending an interview (or, in the case of suspects, before asking more direct questions that may lead to suspect to end the interview before I got the chance to get answers to more minor questions). Ofter, my "summary" section would be extremely short and just describe larger timeline changes, like if a report spans multiple days or locations, I would mark the end of one incident in the bottom few lines of the page and jump to a new page to take notes about the next incident. I'm very curious if this methodology is used by a lot of others as well (especially in law enforcement), or if I just happened to find one with remarkable similarity to Cornell's.

sakras 7y ago

They made us on several different occasions take Cornell notes saying they'd help us learn. Supposedly there were numerous studies saying that students that used them succeeded. I HATED taking these notes - it just makes more sense to me to format things as a textbook-writer would. I think of my notebooks as mini-textbooks. On a more general note, I've noticed throughout my undergrad experience that whenever some lecturer/Professor/TA comes up and says they read a study about "evidence-based learning" and that this method will help us learn 10x better, they're full of shit. I want nothing more than to take notes however I want, to a lecture.