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> People often claim that taking notes by hand, because it is slow, forces you to interpret and condense what you are learning into a more compact representation, and therefore understand it better.

> while I'm busy doing that thinking, I missed the last 3 sentences from the lecturer

That's not the same kind of note-taking. The first is writing for understanding, the second is taking quick notes to avoid missing anything while the lecturer is talking.

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No, I'm saying when I missed the last three sentences, now I don't even understand the lecture anymore. There's a variable written on the board and I don't know what it represents.

And then by the time I figure it out, I haven't understood a bunch of previous points that depended on knowing what the variable was.

That's exactly the second kind of quick note taking I was talking about.

OK, but you can't do both at the same time. That's my point.

And the "quick" version is not what people claim provides any benefits of understanding.

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