/sci/ - Science & Math

meta question:

sometimes, I get stuck on a problem, and after peaking at the solution it's obvious, and was usually some elaborate symbol crunching I missed. I'm not sure how best to synthesize information in these scenarios. In these cases, the problems solution isn't fundementally important to the topic, and redoing the problem a few times spaced out over a couple weeks to a month usually keeps the solution (often more like a "trick") in my memory for long enough (forever?).

how do you deal with problems like that? do I just go "oh", and move on? are they worth revisiting? I feel bad if I leave problems behind that I couldn't solve again if I tried, so I frequently flip back to problems to make sure I can solve everything in the book. FWIW, I normally do this kind of work when I'm tired and/or not operating at 100% capacity, it seems like a good use of fogbrain time.