How do you remember / keep the formulas straight in your head? remember, different, only, although, difficult

franzino

I was just wondering how you all keep so many formulas straight in your head.

I've been working on Quantitative Methods and although I've only scratched the surface on the CFA... I'm already I'm having a hard time keeping the various yield formulas straight, and all the different formulas for the various deviations, etc. I know this will only get more difficult as I continue studying and the formulas will mount on top of each other ever more moving forward.

I was hoping someone here could share some insight on how they kept the formulas straight in their heads and not get them all jumbled up.

Thank you!

draz

Don't worry too much about remembering formulas at this stage. You should spend the last 4 - 6 weeks (leading up to the exam) doing practice tests and QBank questions. After doing tons of those you'll have no trouble remembering formulas!

studyn

I am keeping a notebook for all the topics. I find this VERY helpful. Sometimes, instead of reading a new Chapter in the CFA books, I review the notes I've written to ensure I retain the info. I think memorizing formulas is best, you need to decide which are most important, (Dupont, Depreciation formulas etc.) It helps me to write the formula in my notebook. (Writing flashcards is good too, but I just use my book. In addition to writing formulas I also write concepts, like why & when Sharpe ratio is used. I hope this helps.

Beatnik

Your calculator can do a lot for you. Remember to leverage it as much as possible. I always confused the money market yield, equivalent yield, etc... It was confusing to remember which one used a 360 day year vs. 365 and/or compounding.

The number of ratios for FRA looks daunting but if you do enough of the EOC problems and qbank you can easily remember them on the fly.

Make sure you know the biggies down cold. i.e. CAPM, WACC, Portfolio Variance (That one sucks), Beta, Correlation