i noticed that after the holidays my math plummeted and teachers told me its because of the break i took… why does this happen and how can i regain those skills acquired prior to the break
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TLDR:
Why we forget? Lack of practice.
How to regain (or not forget)? Practice.
We forget some things over time without practice. If I ask you to memorise a string of 10 digits in a few minutes you’ll probably be able to do it. If I don’t tell you that I’ll want to you to repeat that string to me in three months’ time, you’ll likely forget it after the first or second day and fail the three-month test. You would have to practice over those months to retain that knowledge. You’ll find that, over time, the 10 digits become increasingly easy to recall and you could even add 10 or 20 more digits to the string.
Many learning apps and websites use a method called “[spaced repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition)” to help keep knowledge (like a second language you want to learn or other subject-specific terminology) in your accessible memory. They work by reminding you/testing you over increasingly longer periods of time. If you forget a piece of information, they will increase the frequency of testing you on that particular piece until you recall it easily, and then reduce that frequency over time unless you fail to recall it again.
As adults, we forget the things we learned in youth (including entire languages) if we don’t practice them. This can be part of the reason we have difficulty in tests like “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?” – the student may have relatively recently learned knowledge in their working memory while adults might not have had it in working memory for years or decades.
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