Techniques for becoming a better learner

There are a number of proven techniques that help us become better learners. Below are some of them:

• Exercise: What is the relation between physical exercise and learning? After all, it seems that learning is just a task of the brain, right? Well, it has been proven scientifically that exercise does, in fact, provide significant benefits in becoming a better learner. A research conducted in rats that were trained to learn something new showed that as the rats learnt new things, their Hippocampus(a part of the brain associated with learning) showed an increase in neurons and new neural connections. This shows that forming new neurons is not stopped after a certain age. And, what is interesting is that exercise also helps for the growth of neurons and it is the best method to do so. 
• Practice: It was earlier believed that children who do not have both their eyes aligned perfectly during their first two years develop permanent disabilities related to depth perception. However, in a research conducted in people with such disabilities, it has been proved that even those people can develop depth perception but it takes much longer for them to learn those things after a certain age. Hence, it can be said that learning something through practice is possible at any age but it takes much longer to learn something if the brain is not in the "learning mode". 
• Metaphor and analogy: This is an interesting technique that helps for building a solid understanding of new concepts. The way it works is, we try to associate a new concept that we learn with familiar things that seem interesting. This helps for retaining those concepts and for further association.  For example, the benzene ring structure shown below is difficult to remember for first-time learners but if we remember the monkeys holding each other, it might seem easy to visualize it. Notice the double bond in the carbon atoms is shown by monkeys joined at the tails and holding their hands. Another example is the image of cat with paws to denote "CATion"

  

  CATion represented as a cat with Paws
  (*Image credit: http://cdn.meme.am/instances/34843673.jpg)

  which has positive charge. In conclusion, metaphor and analogies help a great deal in learning something new but it can be difficult to develop those analogies at first. Practice makes perfect. 



Benzene ring structure
(**Image credit: Monkeys in a ring, from Berichte der Durstigen Chemischen Gesellschaft(1886), p. 3536, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benzene-2D-full.svg)

References:

*Image credit: http://cdn.meme.am/instances/34843673.jpg 

**Image credit: Monkeys in a ring, from Berichte der Durstigen Chemischen Gesellschaft(1886), p. 3536, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benzene-2D-full.svg

Memory

Memorization does not always have to be boring. There are various techniques that we can try to memorize things.
Creating meaningful groups:
This is a technique that one can use to memorize certain things, for instance, to remember the cranial bones, there is a well-known sentence wherein the first letters of each word represents the first letter of the bones in the cranium: Old People From Texas Eat Spiders: Occipital, Parietal, Frontal, Temporal, Ethmoid and Sphenoid. The reason we remember the sentence more easily than the actual words we want to memorize is that they are funny, weird or just more interesting than the actual

Memory Palace Technique: 
Though I am not a big fan of this technique, this might work for people who try to create mental images for the things they learn. In fact, one study even showed that people who use this technique can remember more than 45% of a 50-item list after only one or two "mental walks"*.
What this technique says:

Example of a memory palace image
(Image credit: Layout of a house, ©Kevin Mendez, B. Oakley, Learning how to learn, Coursera.org/learning-003)*

1. Imagine a place with many rooms that you can easily remember such as your home or office. This is what we call the 'Memory Palace'.
2. Make a mental image of a specific route that you go through such as once you enter your home through your front door,  you go to the living room, then to your kitchen etc. Always take the same route in your mental path when you have to use this technique.
3. Try to associate things that you need to remember with things in your 'memory palace'.
4. Try to be imaginative and make some funny, interesting mental images of those items in those places from (1).
5. Repeat the practice as this technique is a bit slow in the beginning but is quite effective after you get used to creating mental images.

For instance, if you have to remember items to buy at a grocery store, you can imagine the places that pass through once you enter your home: a big box of cereals on the front door, a carton of milk lying  on the sofa, eggs on the table etc etc. This method helps us to imagine the sequence of places that we pass through every time and recall the things that we associated with those places so that the items can be remembered easily.
Trivia:

• Sherlock Holmes, in the BBC series, Sherlock, uses this technique in the episode 2 of season 2 'The Hounds of Baskerville' to recall events from his memory. 
• The Memory Palace technique is also called the Method of Loci

References:

*(Image credit: Layout of a house, ©Kevin Mendez, B. Oakley, Learning how to learn, Coursera.org/learning-003)

Focused and Diffused mode

It seemed quite strange to me the first time I heard about that there are two modes of thinking/learning: Focused and the Diffused mode.

Focused Mode: The brain focusses constantly on one particular thing which can be explained by an analogy: a pinball game where the bumpers(blue in the figure) are neurons, the red arrow(pinball path) is the thought and neural pattern is represented by the black connection between bumpers. As it turns out, in the focused mode, our brain has a limited set of neural connections. This is usually the case when we try to remember something that we already know and are familiar with the concept of the problem we are thinking about. If the idea we are thinking about is new, then this focussed mode is not so effective as the ideas already in our

Focused and Diffused mode of thinking
(Image source: https://thewingchair.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/pinball2.jpg) *

brain kind of make a "close set" of neural connections that prevent us from getting the big picture or in the analogy, the bumpers are closely packed so that the thought pattern cannot spread wide.
Diffused Mode: In this mode, the neural connections are widely spaced apart which means our thought pattern can go across neural patterns in diverse areas and can help us connect various things that we have learned so that we can get the big picture in any problem. In the pinball analogy, it can be thought of as having the bumpers widely apart so that the pinball(thought) can go a long distance without getting blocked by any bumper(already formed neural pattern).

So, what's the conclusion?
Well, our mind needs to go back and forth between the two modes when we are learning something new. Since the mind goes to the diffused mode even when we are not actively engaged in 'learning' in the traditional sense, i.e. the mind is sub-consciously learning in the diffused mode even when we are seemingly involved in trivial tasks like walking, taking a shower, etc, we need to take breaks in between those active learning periods.

Learning is similar to building a wall; if we do not let the mortar dry out properly, it will collapse.
(**Image source: Brick walls ©Kevin Mendez, 2014, Learning how to learn, coursera.org/learning)

A particularly interesting analogy is that of building a wall from bricks and mortar.  If do not let the mortar properly dry out before adding extra bricks while building a wall, the whole structure will collapse. Hence, the conclusion is that we need let our mind assimilate what he has learnt during the active learning period so that the material is deeply ingrained in our minds.
References:
* Image source: https://thewingchair.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/pinball2.jpg
* *Image source: Brick walls ©Kevin Mendez, 2014, Learning how to learn, coursera.org/learning

Procrastination

Procrastination:
I have been reading a book by Daniel Kahneman titled "Thinking fast and slow"* where the author explains about the results he got from his research over the course of a decade. One thing that particularly interested me is the idea that our brain can be logically divided into two systems which are engaged as the need arises. The first system, System 1, is used sub-consciously by us when we are doing nothing as seen from the outside but are constantly analyzing the surrounding around us. The second system, System 2, is used when we have to actively do something or use our mind to get some results or have to memorize something. The interesting part is that our System 2 is quite lazy and wants to avoid doing something as much as possible. This is what happens when we try to do something: our System 2 tries to put off doing something and we resort to checking our emails, social media or anything that does not require much mental effort.

(Image source: Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes, http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2012/05/24)**

Well, the 'last-minute panic' mood is not a very effective technique. However, there is an interesting technique that can be quite effective in tackling procrastination.

The Pomodoro Technique:
Pomodoro, in Italian, means tomato which the creator of this technique,  Francesco Cirillo, coined after he used a kitchen timer shaped as a tomato. Essentially, this technique can be summarized as follows:

A Pomodoro timer
(Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique)

• Make a list of to-do things 
• Set a timer for a certain time, for example 25 minutes. 
• Work on the task with full concentration during the "working time"
• Take a break for a short time, say 5 minutes
• Repeat the above cycle again.

Why this works?
It might seem at first glance that this is just a trick that would have worked for some people and may not work for everyone. But, in fact, tackling procrastination means we need to get into the "flow" of doing things which is to overcome the mental discomfort that arises when we have to put our mental effort into doing something. The same thing applies to learning something as well where the mental discomfort is in overcoming the System 2's laziness. The Pomodoro technique helps us overcome the mental discomfort by making us a discipline to work for a certain time rather than just work for as long as we wish. This is rewarded by a short break following that intense concentration period which gives our mind the relaxation it needs.

Pomodoro based timer for Windows Computer:
I came across a timer for Windows computer based on the Pomodoro technique; it is free and is quite simple. All you have to do is download it and open it everytime you want to start a Pomodoro. The timer stays on top of all other windows and gives a notification whenever the time expires. Also, the tasks that you want to do can be written on a text file and can be saved so that progress can be tracked. There are other timer softwares as well but I found it to be simple and easy to use. To download:
https://keepfocused.codeplex.com/***
References:
* Thinking fast and slow, Daniel Kahneman, 2011

**http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2012/05/24
*** keepfocussed .codeplex.com

Learning how to learn

What is learning?


“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever”
-Mahatma Gandhi(*)




Most of us have the notion that learning is something that happens when we go to school, take courses, study for the exams and so on. The dictionary meaning of learning defines it as "the activity or process of gaining knowledge or skill by studying, practicing, being taught, or experiencing something".*
Well, it seems there is much more to 'learning' in the practical sense than just understanding or even 'gaining knowledge' in something.
'Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects'** is an online course from the University of California, San Diego that answers a lot of questions about what learning really is and what the best ways of learning are.
 In the following posts, I will write about some topics that are covered in the course and provide some links/references that would be helpful in getting to know the different things that are related to learning. There are some very interesting techniques that would help us overcome procrastination, learn the useful effects of sleep in learning that has been actually verified by science, and so on.

What goes on in the brain when we learn something?:
There are billions of neurons(brain cells) in the brain and when we are learning something, electrical signals travel across neurons over and over. Eventually, the brain starts to create pathways or connections between those neurons so that the messages can travel easily. Thus, the more we practice something or use those pathways, the stronger the connection becomes and we learn and remember something well.
Here is an image of the neural pathway for vision:

Neural pathway for vision
(Image source: http://ysa.org.au/melbourne/2014/10/1659/)***

References:
*“The good boatman: a portrait of Gandhi” from 1995
- * Merriam Webster's Dictionary, Learning (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/learning)
- ** https://class.coursera.org/learning-003
- *** http://ysa.org.au/melbourne/2014/10/1659/

Outliers

I just finished reading the book "Outliers The story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell and I can say this is the best book I have read so far. There is something about the way things are explained in this book that captivated me; the author describes how success is not only the result of the person's hard work or ingenuity but is deeply connected with our upbringing, the culture we grew up in and the opportunities we got when we needed them. The most mind-boggling example is of Bill Gates who most people think is a genius who dropped out of Harvard to start his own company and due to his ingenuity was able to raise a successful company. But, as is explained in the book and which Gates also agrees by saying that he 'was very lucky', Gates got an unusual opportunity; in 1968, when he was in his eighth grade, his school purchased a 'time-sharing machine' which was a very sophisticated computer at that time that allowed many people to connect to the terminal at the same time using telephone cables and run their code. Remember, this was 1968 and Gates also says that he would be 'stunned' if there were more than 50 people in the whole world who had that kind of opportunity. A lot of other examples of famous people are explained in the book including the Beatles, the Canadian Hockey team selection and so on that are quite surprising. Gladwell has a knack of observing connections between things that most people would simply ignore saying it happened out of sheer luck.

Here is a list of things from the book that simply amazed me:

1. The 10,000-Hour Rule: You need to practice something for at least 10,000 hours if you want to be truly successful. Examples:
(i) The Beatles were not that famous until they performed in Hamburg, Germany. They performed for 1200 times during the course of a year and a half which is astonishing; most bands do not perform that many times in their entire career.
(ii)  Bill Joy: He wrote UNIX and is a famous scientist but he did not do that only due to his intelligence. He spent hours writing programs sometimes even till two or three in the morning. The hours he spent writing programs until he became ready to write UNIX was almost 10,000.
2. Mind-boggling connection: All of the four founders of Sun Microsystems were born between 1954 and 1955. The connection between their birth year and their success? In January 1975, a minicomputer was invented that was inexpensive, small in size compared to the huge machines that were called computers back then and in order to seize the opportunity of programming it, a person born around 1955 would be young enough and if he had the enthusiasm and the experience of writing programs, he would be the ideal. No one was better fitting to the job than Gates, Bill Joy and other people with similar background.
3. General intelligence and practical intelligence are Orthogonal.
4. Hard work is a prison sentence if only it does not have meaning.
5. Korean flight accident and how much culture influenced how the first pilot and flight engineer reported the problems they had seen to their senior captain. Quote: Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from - and when we ignore that fact, planes crash.
6. The Chinese, Korean and Japanese have a logical counting system where eleven is ten-one, twenty-four is two-tens-four and so on. The result? They can perform calculations much faster. Eg. 37+22=59, when asked to a child whose native language is English, he has to do the calculation in his head but if we ask that to a Chinese child, he will say the answer right away: three-tens-seven plus two-tens-two equals five-tens-nine.
7. "A belief in work ought to be a thing of beauty": Reference to the Chinese farmers  who worked diligently in the rice fields all year long and 360 days a year. This cultivated a sense of  hard work in their children.
8. TIMSS exam: Math and science test for students from different countries. Before the actual exam, there is a questionnaire with 120 questions that asks the students about their parents' educational level and so on. The countries which come first in those tests have students who answer all those 120 questions before beginning the actual test while students from other countries leave as many as 20 questions unanswered.
9. "The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all."










Reference:
* Outliers, the story of success, Malcolm Gladwell.