I feel my comment is slightly misunderstood. I don't mean to say that strictly memorization is the path to mathematical understanding.
Besides brushing up on my math, starting from simple arithmetic, In my spare time I also study Japanese. And one of the things that has helped me the most in my fluency and understanding has been the memorization of vocabulary and of grammar patterns and their usage.
Of course, I read materials at my own level and listen to material at my level and above and practice writing. However, I noticed the biggest boost in my comprehension after I memorize a large amount of words or really internalize grammar patterns. And I do this mainly through flashcards.
I have to spend much less mental energy to catch on to what is being expressed allowing me the ability to potentially comprehend more.
And analogously to my language studies, I would like to approach math in a similar fashion.
What you are saying makes perfect sense in the context of language learning. I also found spaced repetition, Anki etc to be extremely effective for that purpose.
My point here is rather that this approach will not work with mathematics, simply because unlike language learning, which is mostly about acquiring and memorizing large amounts of simple X to Y mapping, mathematics has much less to do with memorization and more to do with building mental framework and placing new knowledge in appropriate places with in.
Understanding is only step 1. Step 2 after understanding is to practice until it becomes automatic and see it from different viewpoints, only then do you truly know it. That is what author of the original article is talking about too.
Besides brushing up on my math, starting from simple arithmetic, In my spare time I also study Japanese. And one of the things that has helped me the most in my fluency and understanding has been the memorization of vocabulary and of grammar patterns and their usage.
Of course, I read materials at my own level and listen to material at my level and above and practice writing. However, I noticed the biggest boost in my comprehension after I memorize a large amount of words or really internalize grammar patterns. And I do this mainly through flashcards.
I have to spend much less mental energy to catch on to what is being expressed allowing me the ability to potentially comprehend more.
And analogously to my language studies, I would like to approach math in a similar fashion.