Knowledge as a graph

Knowledge is a graph of interconnected nodes. Each node represents an atomic concept or idea.

Spaced repetition cards

In theory, each atomic node can be a Spaced Repetition card (this is essentially what I mean by atomic).

If it feels difficult to construct a spaced repetition card, it’s probably because that section of one’s knowledge graph is not yet broken down into atomic nodes with clear and simple connections to each other.

Any well-understood (i.e. chunked) node is defined by its relationship to other well-understood nodes, and one marker of a well-understood node is if it has a term or phrase it can be identified by. Using good Concept Handles might help when trying to flesh out an idea area.

Simplified example

The spaced repetition card for a mathematical group could contain this first sentence from wikipedia

A set equipped with an operation that combines any two elements to form a third element while being associative as well as having an identity elements and inverse elements.

Each concept (represented by the bold) could be a connected node, and in a sense, one must first fully understand each of those connected nodes to then understand what a group is.

How each concept should be broken down may be subjective to some degree: one has to decide how to make a concept atomic (for this example, if it has a wikipedia page I considered it a concept of its own).

Similarly, concepts are related to each other in many ways, but not necessarily all those relations are relevant for “knowing” the concept (i.e. putting it on a spaced repetition card).

Group theory is a lot more complicated than simply knowing what a group is, so the node group will be connected to a lot of other concepts. But its definition should be well-scoped in order to be atomic and made into a spaced repetition card.

In other words, I’m not yet sure how to think about the many different ways nodes could be connected here.

Related ->

A lot of this comes form seeing connections in things like categories and making cards for a Spaced Repetition system.

Also thanks to Zander on Twitter for spurring me to finally write up a bit more on these thoughts.