What do people here think about using audiobooks for study? I have a job that let’s me listen to them all day so I take advantage of that. It is possible to download video lectures as audio and listen to them as well. I also have an Ipod touch which lets me listen to them at x1.5 speed. The biggest problem with them is that it is hard to find good hard academic stuff.
I find that audiobooks are great for absorbing high level concept, or popular level books and it is the preferred method of exploring that level of material. However, I wouldn’t study math through an audiobook, or any of the hard sciences in any in depth sort of way.
For instance, through the audiobook method I tried to listen to On Intelligence and while the core ideas of Hierarchical Memory and the Neo-Cortex as a pattern recognition system were easy to follow, at chapter 6, where he went into any high level of detail at all, it was hard to follow. My mind had trouble visualizing the figures and I ended up skipping that section and just resolved to find it in a library or bookstore and read the chapter there.
Personally, I use audiobooks solely for soft sciences like Psychology, fiction, entry level lectures, and popular science books. But I know I wouldn’t be able to learn, say Calculus from an audiobook anymore than I could watch the Godfather through the radio. I could get some bits and pieces, but details and rules would be hard to construct and any work I was doing would be sub par. Of course you may have a higher level of retention of crystallization and if you can grok spoken equations then by all means make audiobooks your primary means of study, for me however, they remain a secondary source of information.
What do people here think about using audiobooks for study? I have a job that let’s me listen to them all day so I take advantage of that. It is possible to download video lectures as audio and listen to them as well. I also have an Ipod touch which lets me listen to them at x1.5 speed. The biggest problem with them is that it is hard to find good hard academic stuff.
I find that audiobooks are great for absorbing high level concept, or popular level books and it is the preferred method of exploring that level of material. However, I wouldn’t study math through an audiobook, or any of the hard sciences in any in depth sort of way.
For instance, through the audiobook method I tried to listen to On Intelligence and while the core ideas of Hierarchical Memory and the Neo-Cortex as a pattern recognition system were easy to follow, at chapter 6, where he went into any high level of detail at all, it was hard to follow. My mind had trouble visualizing the figures and I ended up skipping that section and just resolved to find it in a library or bookstore and read the chapter there.
Personally, I use audiobooks solely for soft sciences like Psychology, fiction, entry level lectures, and popular science books. But I know I wouldn’t be able to learn, say Calculus from an audiobook anymore than I could watch the Godfather through the radio. I could get some bits and pieces, but details and rules would be hard to construct and any work I was doing would be sub par. Of course you may have a higher level of retention of crystallization and if you can grok spoken equations then by all means make audiobooks your primary means of study, for me however, they remain a secondary source of information.