Chapter 11 Flashcards
(28 cards)
Take a piece of paper and doodle to create a visual or verbal metaphor for a concept you are trying to understand now in math or science.
Look at a chapter in a book you are reading in math or science.
Create a question about that material that would make you want to learn more about it.
Just before you go to sleep, review something mentally that you are trying to learn.
To boost this process, review it yet again when you first wake up.
Songs to Help You Learn
Make up a song to remember an identity, integral, or scientific formula that you need for class.
Having some of these important concepts memorized through whatever trick you need will make more complicated problems easier and faster to solve.
MEMORY TRICKS WORK
On top of working toward my engineering degree, I am in the process of getting my paramedic license (only two months left!) and have to memorize a large selection of drugs and dosages for both adult and pediatric patients.
At first, this seemed overwhelming, especially since there will be lives at stake.
But I quickly found little tricks that made learning easy.
Take, for example, the drug furosemide, also called Lasix, which draws fluid out of the body.
The dose I needed to remember was 40 milligrams.
This, to me, was a godsend,as the numbers 4–0 appeared to me in the word (4–0 semide = furosemide).
It is things like this that truly can cement ideas and knowledge in our heads. I now don’t ever have toeven think twice about it. Truly remarkable
TALK TO YOURSELF
I often tell my students to talk to themselves instead of just highlighting and rereading.
They look at me quizzically, like I am absolutely insane (which could be true).
But I have had many students come back to me later and say that it really works and that this is now one of their study tools.
WRITE ON!“
The number one thing I stress when students come to see me is that there is a direct connection between your hand and your brain, and the act of rewriting and organizing your notes is essential to breaking large amounts of information down into smaller digestible chunks.
I have many students who prefer to type their notes in a Word document or onslides, and when these students are struggling, the first thing I recommend is to quit typingand start writing.
In every case, they perform better on the next section of material
BEWARE OF MISTAKING A MEMORY TRICK FOR ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE
In chemistry, we have the phrase skit ti vicer man feconi kuzin, which has the cadence of a rap song.
It represents the first row of the transition metals on the periodic table (Sc, Ti, V,Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn). Then, the rest of the transition metals can be placed on a blank periodic table by other memory tricks.
For example, students remember to place Ag (silver)and Au (gold) in the same vertical group as Cu (copper) since copper, silver, and gold are all used to make coins.
“Unfortunately, some students come away thinking that’s the reason these metals are in the same vertical column—because they are used to make coins.
The real reason has to do with similarities in chemical properties and valences.
“This is an example of how students sometimes mistake a memory trick for actual knowledge.
Always be wary of confusing what is truly going on with the metaphor you are using to help your memory
Create a Metaphor to Help You Learn
Think of a concept you are learning now.
Is there another process or idea in a completely different field that somehow seems similar to what you are studying?
See if you can come up with a helpful metaphor.
(Bonus points if there’s a touch of silliness!)
SPACED REPETITION—USEFUL FOR BOTH STUDENTS AND PROFESSORS!
I have been advising my students to do spaced repetition over days and weeks, not just in my analytic courses but also in my History of Ancient Engineering course.
When memorizing strange names and terms, it’s always best to practice over several days.
In fact, that’s precisely what I do when I’m preparing for lectures—repeat the terms out loud over a period of several days, so they roll easily off my tongue when I say them in class.
METAPHORS AND VISUALIZATION IN SCIENCE
Metaphors and visualization—being able to see something in your mind’s eye—have been uniquely powerful in helping the scientific and engineering world move forward.
In the1800s, for example, when chemists began to imagine and visualize the miniature world ofmolecules, dramatic progress began to be made.
Here is a delightful illustration of monkeysin a benzene ring from an insider spoof of German academic chemical life, printed in1886.5 Note the single bonds with the monkeys’ hands and the double bonds with their tinytails.
MOONBEAMS AND SCHOOL DREAMS
I always study before I go to bed. For some reason, I usually dream about the material I just studied.
Most time, these ‘school dreams’ are quite strange but helpful.
For instance, when I was taking an operations research class, I would dream I was running back and forth between nodes, physically acting out the shortest path algorithm.
People think I’m crazy, but I think it’s great; it means I don’t have to study as much as other people do. I guess these dreams involve my subconsciously making metaphors.
What is one of the best things you can do to remember and u derstand concepts and math and science? Why?
One of the best things you can do to not only remember but understand concepts in math and science is to create a metaphor or analogy for it—often, the more visual, the better.
What is a metaphor? How can you use it to help you remember a concept?
A metaphor is just a way of realizing that one thing is somehow similar to another. Simple ideas like one geographyteacher’s description of Syria as shaped like a bowl of cereal and Jordan as a Nike Air Jordan sneaker can stick with a student for decades.
If you’re trying to understand electrical current, it can help to visualize itas water.
Similarly, electrical voltage can “feel like” pressure.
Voltage helps push the electrical current to where you want it to go, just like a mechanical pump uses physical pressure to push real water. As you climb to a moresophisticated understanding of electricity, or whatever topic you areconcentrating on, you can revise your metaphors, or toss them away and createmore meaningful ones.If you are trying to understand the concept of limits in calculus, you might visualize a runner heading for the finish line. The closer the runner gets, the lower he goes.
It’s one of those slo-mo camera shots where the runner is never quite able to reach the ribbon, just as we might not quite be able to get the actual limit
Can you pretend you are the concept to help you understand it? Give an example of how.
It’s often helpful to pretend you are the concept you are trying tounderstand.
Put yourself in an electron’s warm and fuzzy slippers as it burrows through a slab of copper, or sneak inside the x of an algebraic equation and feel what it’s like to poke your head out of the rabbit hole (just don’t let it get exploded with an in advertent “divide by zero”).
How do actors remember their lines? How can you use that to your advantage when trying to study a concept?
One study of how actors memorize their scripts showed that they avoidverbatim memorization. Instead, they depend on an understanding of the characters’ needs and motivations in order to remember their lines.
Similarly, the most important part of your memorization practices is to understand what the formulas and solution steps really mean. Understanding also helps a lot with the memorization process.You may object and say that you’re not creative—that an equation ortheory could hardly have its own grandiose motivations or persnicketyemotional needs to help you understand and remember it.
But remember that dinner two-year-old.
Your childlike creativity is still there—you just need to reach out to it.
Is it easy to build more memory? Does making more memory make you more creative?
What’s more, the memorization process itself becomes an exercise in creativity.
The more you memorize using these innovative techniques, the more creative you become. This is because you are building wild, unexpected possibilities for future connections early on, even as you are first internalizing the ideas. The more you practice using this type of “memory muscle,” themore easily you will be able to remember.
Where at first it may take fifteen minutes to build an evocative image for an equation and embed it in, say, the kitchen sink of your memory palace, it can later take only minutes or secondsto perform a similar task.
You will also realize that as you begin to internalize key aspects of thematerial, taking a litle time to commit the most important points to memory, you come to understand it much more deeply. The formulas will mean far more to you than they would if you simply looked them up in a book. Andyou’ll be able to sling those formulas around more proficiently on tests and inreal-world applications.
Do memory tricks help people expand their working memory?
By using mental pictures instead of words to remember things, you can leap more easily into expert status.
In other words, learning to process ideas visually in math and science is a powerful way to become an amaster of the material.
Using other memory tricks can greatly enhance your ability to learn and retain the material. Purists might sniff that using oddball memorization, and gimmicks isn’t really learning. But research has shown that students who use these types of tricksoutperform those who don’t.
In addition, imaging research on how people become experts shows that such memory tools speed up the acquisition of bothchunks and big-picture templates, helping transform novices to semiexpertsmuch more quickly—even in a mater of weeks.
Memory tricks allow people to expand their working memory with easy access to long-term memory.
Whats the easiest way to boost your memory and ability to learn?
Several recent experiments in both animals and humans have found that regular exercise can make a substantive improvement in your memory and learning abilities.
Exercise, it seems, helps create new neurons in areas that relate to memory.
It also creates new signaling pathways.
It seems that different types of exercise—running or walking, for example, versus strength training—may have subtly different molecular effects.
But both aerobic and resistance exercise exertsimilarly powerful results on learning and memory.
What are the 2 ways to help improve your muscle memory? How can writing things out by hand both be helpful and hurtful?
muscle memory related to writing by hand and exercising.
For example, when you first stare at an equation, it can appearuterly meaningless.
But if you thoughtfully write the equation out several times on a sheet of paper, you will be startled by how the equation will begin to take life and meaning in your mind. In a related vein, some learners find that reading problems or formulas aloud helps them understand better.
Just be wary of exercises like writing an equation out a hundred times by hand.
The first few times may give you value, but after a while, it simply becomes a rote exercise—the time could be better spent elsewhere.
How can story telling help with retaining and understanding information?
Storytelling, in general, has long been a vitally important way of understanding and retaining information.
Professor VeraPavri, a historian of science and technology at York University, tells her students not to think of lectures as lectures but as stories where there is a plot,characters, and overall purpose to the discussion.
The best lectures in math and science are often framed like thrillers, opening with an intriguing problem that you just have to figure out.
If your instructor or book doesn’t present the material with a question that leaves you wanting to find the answer, see if youcan find that question yourself—then set about answering it.
And don’t forget the value of the story as you create memory tricks.
How can memorable sentences help with memorizing concepts?
Many disciplines use memorable sentences to help students memorizeconcepts the first level of each word in the sentence, which is also the first leter of each word in a list that needs to be memorized. Medicine, for example, is ladenwith memorable mnemonics, among the cleaner of which are “Some Lovers Try Positions that They Can’t Handle” (to memorize the names of the carpalbones of the hand) and “Old People from Texas Eat Spiders” (for the cranialbones).
Another example is for the increases-by-ten structure of the decimals system:
King Henry died while drinking chocolate milk.
This translates to kilo—1,000; hecto—100; deca—10; “while” represents 1; deci—0.1; centi—0.01;milli—0.001.
What is meaningful grouping? How can you use it with mnemonics? How can you remember lists using it or specific important dates? Can you find a way to use leter griffin with meaningful grouping?
Another key to memorization is to create meaningful groups that simplify the material.
Let’s say you wanted to remember four plants that help ward of fvampires—garlic, rose, hawthorn, and mustard.
The first leters abbreviate to GRHM, so all you need to do is remember the image of a GRAHAM cracker.
(Retrieve your cracker from the kitchen table of your memory palace, dust off the vowels, and you’re good to go.)
It’s much easier to remember numbers by associating them with memorable events.
The year 1965 might be when one of your relatives wasborn, for example.
Or you can associate numbers with a numerical system thatyou’re familiar with.
For example, 11.0 seconds is a good running time for the 100-meter dash.
Or 75 might be the number of knitting stitches cast onto aneedle for the ski hats you like to make.
Personally, I like to associate numbers with the feelings of when I was or will be at a given age.
The number 18 is an easy one—that’s when I went out into the world.
By age 104, I will be an oldbut happy great-granny!
What is how of the best ways to remember someones names?
One of the best ways to remember people’s names is tosimply try to retrieve the people’s names from memory at increasing timeintervals after first learning the name.
Material that you do not review is moreeasily discounted or forgoten. Your metabolic vampires suck away the links tothe memories. This is why it’s wise to be careful about what you decide toskip when reviewing for tests. Your memory for related but nonreviewedmaterial can become impaired.
