How would you study an undergraduate/graduate textbook in 5 days, provided...

you had the necessary background?

This is assuming you had to sit a comprehensive exam on the content of the book right afterwards.

Reply 1

poorform

Unless you are very good I imagine it would be very difficult to do this. To be honest with more advanced topics it takes more time for harder proofs and concepts to sink in. It's not like you can just expect to take everything in, in one read. Why would you want to do this anyway.

Reply 2

nohomo

Original post by poorform

How many days would it take?

Reply 3

davros

Original post by nohomo

you had the necessary background?

This is assuming you had to sit a comprehensive exam on the content of the book right afterwards.

You would never do this!

I know of no undergraduate (or higher) level textbook in existence that is designed to be studied in 5 days.

Reply 4

nohomo

Original post by davros

You would never do this!

I know of no undergraduate (or higher) level textbook in existence that is designed to be studied in 5 days.

How long should it take?

Reply 5

SophieSmall

Original post by nohomo

How long should it take?

The months up until the exams in which you were supposed to be going to lectures, doing assignments and reading in your spare time.

So basically, it's supposed to take the amount of time you're at university.

Reply 6

SwearyKnitter

Basically, you haven't bothered studying at all, and now yo'ure panicking because you have an exam coming up.

Bite the bullet, youre f***ed

Reply 7

nohomo

Original post by SophieSmall

Original post by SwearyKnitter

Basically, you haven't bothered studying at all, and now yo'ure panicking because you have an exam coming up.

Bite the bullet, youre f***ed

No guys I'm not even at uni this is just something I want to do in my spare time

Reply 8

Duncan2012

Original post by nohomo

No guys I'm not even at uni this is just something I want to do in my spare time

If you have to ask the question, you're not ready for it.

Reply 9

nohomo

Original post by Duncan2012

If you have to ask the question, you're not ready for it.

When will I be ready sir?

Reply 10

davros

Original post by nohomo

How long should it take?

What of course are we talking about?

A university text isn't like an A level book where you learn some simple concepts, do tons of examples and convince yourself you understand it!

Typically there will be abstract concepts to learn and digest, lemmas and theorems to analyse, and exercises of increasing difficulty which may or may not have solutions. In the absence of a university support network, it could take anything between a month or 6 months!!

Reply 11

SophieSmall

Original post by nohomo

No guys I'm not even at uni this is just something I want to do in my spare time

Then it'll have to be an ongoing thing. It's not something you can learn in a few weeks. The textbooks often compliment other resources so you're at a disadvantage. Whatever subject you're wishing to pursue in your spare time I recommend making a thread on here asking what kind of structure the course has at university and how and at what pace they learn. It'll give you a better idea.

Reply 12

Absent Agent

Original post by nohomo

No guys I'm not even at uni this is just something I want to do in my spare time

So why are you putting yourself under time constraint?

Reply 13

The_Internet

Cram cram cram cram CRAM SO MUCH!
Don't eat properly
Takeaway food
Spend your entire day revising

(I've done this once when I've had to go for an interview and I was like "**** I forgot some of the basics")

Reply 14

Duncan2012

Original post by nohomo

When will I be ready sir?

When you have a suitable academic understanding appropriate to the information you'd be learning. Not when you're wanting to do this for bragging rights or something. If you're at a level where you'd benefit from reading the book, why would you set an artificial deadline to finish it? So what if it takes one day or a thousand to understand what's written?

Reply 15

nohomo

Original post by Duncan2012

I've got half a degree in maths but dropped out on medical grounds...I'd set an artificial deadline so I could move onto another book afterwards...

Reply 16

TeeEm

I own in excess of 2000 mathematics books of which roughly 3/4 are undergrad level.

I estimated a while back that

if I was not to be in some kind of employment from now on
and if my brain was not to deteriorate through age
and if I was to be reading 5 days a week, for around 8 hours a day
I would need to live until I was 377 to go through these books.

we do the arithmetic next

I am about to turn 50 in a few days

377 - 50 = 327

1500 / 327 = 4.6 books per year

or 365 days / 4.6 = 80 days per book (approx) with the conditions given above

good luck

(edited 8 years ago)

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Reply 17

Duncan2012

Original post by nohomo

I've got half a degree in maths but dropped out on medical grounds...I'd set an artificial deadline so I could move onto another book afterwards...

If you've got 'half a degree' in maths then you'll know how large uni textbooks are and how difficult they can be to read. Especially in one go. If this isn't a troll I think your plan is nuts.

Tell us which book.

Original post by poorform

Unless you are very good I imagine it would be very difficult to do this.

Very difficult under any circumstances I think.

Also depends massively on the course. If I'd had to, I think I could have pulled off the part IB course on Numerical Methods like this, at least for a couple of alphas (which would be "par" for a first). But that's really the only course I can think of where it was even remotely possible.

To be honest with more advanced topics it takes more time for harder proofs and concepts to sink in. It's not like you can just expect to take everything in, in one read. Why would you want to do this anyway.

Yeah, especially on the 2nd/3rd years of a degree. At that level, even taking the "normal" time to do a course, if you sat an exam the day after the course ended, few people would pick up many marks on anything taught in the last couple of weeks.