# Changes

## Understanding mathematical definitions

, 21:40, 24 December 2018
no edit summary
| Chunking/processing level by level || This is for definitions that involve multiple layers of quantifiers. || || || See Tao's definitions for $\varepsilon$-close, eventually $\varepsilon$-close, $\varepsilon$-adherent, etc.
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==Ways to speed things up==

There are several ways to speed up/skip steps in the above table, so that one doesn't spend too much time on definitions.

===Lazy understanding===

One idea is to skip trying to really grok a definition at first, and see what bad things might happen. The idea is to then only come back to the definition when one needs details from it. This is similar to [[wikipedia:Lazy evaluation|lazy evaluation]] in programming.

===Building off similar definitions===

If a similar definition has just been defined (and one has taken the time to understand it), a similar definition will not need as much time to understand (one only needs to focus on the differences between the two definitions). For instance, after one has understood set union, one can relatively quickly understand set intersection.