Before answering the question of "Why is the Ytree a fundamental tool for thinking?", let's first take a look at the prevalence of the tree structure in people's daily work and life.
In computer science courses, there are various concepts of trees, such as binary trees, binary search trees, balanced binary trees, Huffman trees, B-trees, red-black trees, and so on. In the field of software development, tree structures are also quite common. For example, the table of contents of a book, the various departments of a large company, the menu of a software system, a family genealogy, and so forth. In the currently most popular field of artificial intelligence (AI), the application of the tree structure is more extensive than ever before. For instance, a tree is needed to extract the key points of an article; a tree is required to display a large family of germs; and a tree is used to showcase a category of medicines, etc. In the field of research on the human Y-chromosome DNA haplotype, the tree is an indispensable tool.
In recent years, a new type of tool like the mind map has emerged, which effectively helps people create complex mind maps. This is a comprehensive application of the tree concept. It can be said that the tree is everywhere!
Let's think about it. What are the basic skills of kung fu movements? It's actually very simple, that is, boxing techniques, leg techniques, and footwork. Similarly, what are the basic skills of thinking? In fact, they are: comparison, classification, and enumeration. The following elaborates on each of them in detail.
Comparison: It is a very important step. Many pieces of information or elements are similar but not identical. Through careful comparison, we need to identify their similarities and differences. We cannot treat them in a general way. This is the primary step of thinking.
Classification: After comparison, we know how to classify the information or elements. Classification is the optimized storage of information and the establishment of memory indexes. This is the second step of thinking and also an important one.
Enumeration: Or we can say exhaustive enumeration. It is an exploratory activity of thinking, a step of exploratory thinking based on the existing processed information, and a source of reasoning and innovation.
Repeatedly using the above three steps is the basic movement of the brain's thinking. In addition, thinking itself is highly flexible, with infinite extensions and arbitrary combinations, which is the magic of thinking.
The Ytree is a tool for constructing and practicing thinking，which naturally fits the above-mentioned thinking activities. It is highly flexible, has a unified style, and is lightweight. You can quickly create a knowledge tree by splitting with spaces. Through dragging with the mouse, you can achieve sorting and reorganization. Its data is in JSON format. The Ytree also has other exciting functions. Please visit its official website to check and experience them. The website address is http://ytree.fun.
There is no perfect tool in the world. What one should be most afraid of is, just as usual, not employing any tool. When you embark on a magical journey of thinking, remember to make use of the Ytree.
The basic functions of Ytree are listed in the context menu (which pops up when you right-click). The basic settings button for Ytree is located in the gear-shaped icon in the top right corner of the page.
Add: Add a new child node to the current node, and the title of the child node will be automatically generated.
Edit: Modify the title of the current node. If there are spaces in the middle of the title, it will be automatically split into multiple sibling nodes (this feature can be disabled).
Copy: Copy the node and its descendant nodes to become sibling tree nodes.
Delete: Delete the current node and its descendant nodes.
Collapse: Collapse all descendant nodes of the current node.
Expand: Expand all descendant nodes of the current node.
Fork: Save all nodes of the current top-level tree to the server and generate a unique page address.
Numbering: Number all child nodes of the current node in sequence; if the number already exists, eliminate it.
Count: Count the number of the current node and all its descendant nodes.
In addition, Ytree supports visual drag-and-drop operations for nodes; supports synchronous updating and display of Ytree view and tree data source code (JSON); supports generating tree view from JSON source code; supports generating QR codes for page addresses; supports searching and jumping using nodes as keywords. The introduction of other settings for Ytree is omitted.