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How To Learn Stuff: Steve Smith
How To Learn Stuff: Steve Smith
0 : 31 January 2017
Steve Smith
[email protected]
Contents
I The Theory 4
1 Introduction 4
1.1 You Can Sculpt Your Own Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 A Sneak Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4 Teaching as Learning 5
4.1 Would You Study Harder to Get an A on a Test, or to Teach Material to the Class? . . . . . . 5
4.2 You Don’t Have to be a Teacher... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.3 ...to Get Into Teach Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.4 Thinking About a Topic From Multiple Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5 Learning Levels 7
5.1 What is the Difference Between Studying and Learning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.2 The Learning Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.2.1 An Example: Pythagoras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.3 The Learning Levels Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.3.1 Another Example: Goldilocks and the Three Bears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.4 At What Learning Level are You Operating? At What Level Do You Need to Operate? . . . 10
5.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
9 Interleaving 13
10 Regular Testing 13
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II The Practice 17
13 The Fundamental Unit of Work: the Sprint 17
13.1 The Basic Sprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
13.2 The Advanced Sprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
13.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
16 What to Do in a Sprint 20
16.1 How to Read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
16.1.1 Preparation 1 : Previewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
16.1.2 Preparation 2 : Ask Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
16.1.3 Recalling and Paraphrasing... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
16.1.4 ...Actively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
16.2 Teaching the Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
16.3 Solving Problems Without Using Examples as as Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
16.4 Creating Practice Exams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
16.5 Learning Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
16.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
17 Mistakes 24
17.1 Analysing Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
17.2 Taking Remedial Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
17.2.1 Doing One Thing at a Time in Algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
17.2.2 Limits on Integrals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
B Limits on Integrals 28
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Prerequisites
I help people learn Maths and Physics. This document is aimed primarily at my students, so that the
examples in it are from these subjects. To follow the examples, you will need to know
• Pythagoras’ Theorem;
• Very basic trigonometry;
• The essentials of integration.
If you don’t know any of this stuff, don’t worry. Just skip the examples!
Sources
This document is based on two main sources: one is a book by Saundra McGuire (McGuire (2015)); and
the other is a book (and associated Coursera course called “Learning How To Learn”) by Barbara Oakley
(Oakley (2014)). Quite a bit of my text is shameless copy-and-paste of sections of these books.
If you are at all interested in learning how to learn, get these books. You won’t regret it. There are so many
ideas in these books that I don’t cover here, because I want this to be a basic guide. So if you want to be
an expert learner - well, you know what to do!
Any mistakes in this document, however, will be mine.
Notes
I prefer to put little explanatory notes for things in footnotes1 so that they don’t distract from the current
moment, but you don’t have to go far to find them. I hope that’s OK with you.
The alternative is an endnote1 , but that disrupts the flow in my opinion. You can find endnotes at the end
of the document, just before the references.
Aims
There are two aims of this document.
First I want to introduce you to evidence for practices that improve learning that I have recently stumbled
upon. That’s the essence of “Part I”.
The second half of the document (cunningly called “Part II”) is devoted to answering the question: “So, how
can I use the theory to improve the way that I learn stuff?”. It shows you basic easy-to-master techniques
for acquiring knowledge, understanding, and applying it.
Techniques that you can apply to any course, on any subject, to do as well as you possibly can on the
course.
Document History
Date Version Comments
31 January 2017 1.0 The initial creation of the document.
1 This is a footnote.
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Part I
The Theory
1 Introduction
I’ve divided this document up into two parts because if you want to cut to the chase and get stuck into
finding out how you can learn much more betterly, skip straight to to Part II.
But I would advise you to read through the first part whenever you can. It’s an interesting read and you
will get a lot out of it, I promise! Part I gives the scientific evidence for the practises that I recommend in
Part II. So it’s kind of important.
But before you skip to Part II, finish reading the introduction!!
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4 Teaching as Learning
4.1 Would You Study Harder to Get an A on a Test, or to Teach Material to the Class?
You might answer this question by saying things like
• “Well, I’d have to really know it if I have to teach it!”
• “If I’m going to teach it, I’d have to try and think of questions that I might be asked and make sure
that I can answer them. I don’t want to look stupid in front of the class.”
• “I want to make sure everyone understands and is prepared for the test, so I need to work out how
to explain the information in more than one way.”
So, have a think. Thus far, have you been working in make-an-A-on-the-test mode, or teach-the-material-to-
the-class mode?
Have you ever been trying to explain something you thought you understood to someone else, only to find
that in the middle of your explanation there was was something you didn’t grasp after all? I’m guessing
the answer is yes. If you hadn’t tried explaining the thing, you probably wouldn’t have realised that you
didn’t understand it until you got into the test.
So why not try explaining things as a means of learning it?
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Quite often, when I wrote a piece of code to implement an idea, the code didn’t work. So I’d change the
code and try again. It still wouldn’t work. Most of the time I’d get it running fairly quickly, but every so
often I just couldn’t get it running properly.
The company that I worked for had a small room with nothing in it but a table, a chair, and sitting on the
table, was a life-sized teddy bear. The idea was that when you got one of those difficult problems, what
you’d do was to prepare a talk and go and explain to the teddy bear what your problem was.
And guess what? Ninety-nine times out of ten, by simply verbalising an explanation of your problem to
the teddy bear, the solution would spring into your mind as you talked. It worked. Even though the teddy
bear couldn’t ask any questions.
Now I know that debugging code isn’t quite the same as trying to learn something, but there are a lot
of parallels. I was trying to teach my idea, and how I was implementing it, to the teddy bear. And as I
taught, I realised something. I learned.
You could do this. When you are trying to learn something, it’s a really good idea to get into teach-the-
material-to-the-class mode, and then practice by trying to teach the material to your teddy bear. Or your
dog. Or your younger sister. Or your parents.
Do you have those parents that keep getting on your back with “You’re not doing enough work”. “You
need to work harder”. “You spend too much time on your phone. Work harder!” Of course you do. Almost
everyone has. Imagine the situation then if you were begging them to let you explain the photo-electric effect,
completing the square, or pseudo-Reimannian manifolds to them every other day. I’ll bet that they soon
leave you alone.
So, getting your parents off your back probably justifies teaching as a means of learning all by itself. But
there’s a much better reason for doing it, of course. It really works as a way of learning stuff. I mean really
learning stuff.
4.5 Summary
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5 Learning Levels
5.1 What is the Difference Between Studying and Learning?
Some answers you might expect from this question:
• “Studying is memorizing information for an exam; learning is when I understand and can apply it.”
• “Studying is short-term; learning is long-term.”
• “Studying is what I do the night before a test to make an A. Learning is what I do if I know that I’m
going to have to use that material later on.”
One student put it this way: “Studying is focusing on the ’whats’, but learning is focusing on the ’hows’,
’whys’ and ’what ifs’. If you focus on the ’whats’, and you forget them, you can’t recreate the information.
But if you focus on the ’hows’, ’whys’ and ’what ifs’, you can often work out what the ’whats’ are.
So you are starting to get the idea that there might be different levels of learning...
Creating
Evaluating
Analysing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering
The basic idea of this thing is that there is a difference between memorising something (Remembering),
understanding it well enough to put it into our own words (Understanding), knowing it well enough to be
able to apply it to different situations (Applying), etc, etc.
• If you are at Remembering, then you have memorised verbatim definitions, formulas, diagrams, etc.,
and you could not put the information into your own words.
• If you are at Understanding, then you can paraphrase the material. You could explain it to your teddy
bear, 8-year-old nephew or 80-year-old grandmother by creating analogies and examples that apply
to their lives.
• If you are at Applying, then you could use the information you have learned to solve problems that
you have never seen before. So if I asked you to give me a mini-lecture on the identity sin2 ( x ) +
cos2 ( x ) ≡ 1, you could talk to me about Pythagoras’ Theorem, how they are essentially the same
thing, and the other identities that are also equivalent to Pythagoras’ Theorem. And you could give
me examples of how you might use (apply) this equation to solve a problem. See Section 5.2.1.
• If you are at Analysing, you can take any concepts that you have learned and break them down into
its component concepts3 .
• If you are at Evaluating, you can look at two different processes, proposed by others, and determine
which is better for whatever reason (correct, desirable, efficient, ease of use).
2 Educational professionals know this as Bloom’s Taxonomy. The ideas for different learning levels were developed initially by
Bloom, et al, in 1956 (see Bloom et al. (1956)), and were later developed by Anderson et al in 2001 (see Anderson et al. (2001)) I
present here the later version, if you are interested!
3 See how the hierarchy thing builds up? If you are at a particular level, then you can use and explain all the levels below.
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• If you are at Creating, you can come up with your own ideas about how to solve different kinds of
problems that no-one has ever told you about. Or you might come up with a different process for
doing something. A different way to do something that makes the task so much easier4 .
you could just learn the equation and hope you remember it when it comes to exam time. If this was your
plan, then you would be at Remembering. But if you have a memory like mine, you are flirting with disaster
adopting that strategy.
Instead, how about learning this picture: I don’t know about you, but I find learning pictures easier than
1
sin( x )
x
cos( x )
learning words and equations. Now if you know this picture, then you can work out what the equation is
that you need to learn. Let’s see how we can do this. If you know Pythagoras’ Theorem, and our picture is
of a right-angled triangle, then you can apply the theorem to this particular triangle. That gives you the
equation:
sin2 ( x ) + cos2 ( x ) ≡ 1
directly!
But if you understand that Equation (1) is completely equivalent to Pythagoras’ Theorem5 , then you are
certainly at least at Understanding. If you couldn’t remember the identity, you could work out what the
identity is from Figure 2. The picture is what you really need to remember.
So there’s a difference between trying to remember facts, and understanding where those facts come from,
and how they fit in to the grand scheme of things. Interesting.
And of course there’s absolutely no point in remembering identities if you don’t know what to do with
them...
If you are interested, there’s a more in-depth look at this example in Appendix A.
4 See,
for example, Smith (2012)
5 Barbara Oakley calls this linking of ideas from one topic area to another in a subject (or even from one subject to another)
“chunking”. Learning a subject is all about making as many chunks as you can!
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Do I need to state that the further up the hierarchy you are, the better?
Remembering You have mastered Remembering when you can recall all of the things that Goldilocks used
at the bears’ home.
Understanding If you can give a reason why Goldilocks preferred Baby Bear’s chair, bed, or porridge,
then you have mastered Understanding.
Applying If you can reasonably predict what items Goldilocks would use when visiting another home,
then you have reached the level of Applying.
Analysing You have mastered Analysing if you can think critically about the context of the story and
call into question particular assumptions; for example: is it plausible that bears could eat porridge out of
bowls?
Evaluating If you can give reasons why Goldilocks’s behaviour could be considered justifiable by some
and unconscionable by others, then you have mastered Evaluating.
Creating And you can demonstrate that you have scaled the entire hierarchy and mastered Creating if
you can write your own story starring a character called Goldilocks but featuring very different themes
and values. “Goldilocks and the Three Vegans”, perhaps.
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5.4 At What Learning Level are You Operating? At What Level Do You Need to
Operate?
Here are some more questions:
• At what learning level do you think you need to be at in order to get great results at GCSE?
• At what learning level do you think you need to be at in order to get great results at A-Level?
• At what learning level do you think you need to be at in order to get great results at university?
It is my view that in order to get pretty good results in a range of GCSE subjects, you only need to be
at the Remembering level. That might sound a bit controversial, and yes, it will vary from one subject to
another, but in general, I don’t think that you have to be very high up the pyramid to be praised by society
as being clever at age 16.
However, when you start your A-level courses, there seems to be a massive jump in difficulty from GCSE.
This step-up is particularly marked in subjects like Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. But it is true for
other subjects too. Not only is the material harder, but the questions are much harder, and you seem to be
going through the material much quicker than before.
So what’s the difference between GCSE and A-Level in subjects like Mathematics, Physics and Chem-
istry? Well, could it be that in order to do well at A-level, it is expected (by exam boards, examiners, and
consequently teachers) that students need to be working at higher learning levels than was necessary for
GCSE?
Suddenly, learning strategies that worked fine at GCSE level (don’t do any work, cram the night before to
remember everything you need for the exam, etc., etc.) aren’t getting very good results any more. It used
to hit a lot of people as soon as they took their first AS exam in the January of Year 126 . But at the time
of writing there aren’t any exams in the January of the AS year any more, the realisation that the sort of
work you are doing isn’t sufficient for A-level might not hit you until it’s too late.
In my view, students need to be at least at the Applying learning level at A-level. And I think that it’s that
two-step jump in learning level that causes people grief when they make the transition from GCSEs to
A-levels. At A-level, much more is expected of you.
So I guess the next question is: if you’re at the Remembering level, how do you get up to the Understanding
and Applying levels? And beyond? Well, that’s for later. For now, just appreciate that what ever course
you do, you have to work at the appropriate learning level.
5.5 Summary
6 When such things existed. And presumably again soon, when January AS exams return, when the Minister for Education
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for example.
8 The best idea I’ve ever had in my life came to me when I was in diffuse mode. In fact, I was asleep. I was trying to solve a
particularly difficult problem while working on a military air-traffic control system. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that
the customer kept changing the requirements. Four of us had been working on this problem for about six months. And the software
was getting more and more complex, larger and larger, as each requirement change came in. And because when each change was
received we had to re-write large chunks of code, then we were continually having to re-test the system to make sure all the previous
requirements (that we’d already tested lots of times) were still satisfied.
This one magnificent night, the solution came to me in a dream. It was astonishing in its simplicity: I could replace all the original
code by only a few lines of code and a small database of rules. The following weekend I spent the whole of Saturday and Sunday stripping
out the original code (that took two days) and replacing it by my new solution (that took about 20 minutes). And it worked. And
the real beauty of the new solution: when a new requirement came in, the code did not have to change: I just changed the rules in the
database! And testing: because the code didn’t change, we only had to test for the changes to the rules.
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Power
So, you look at the side with the Power on it, and see if you can remember what’s written on the other side.
If you can’t, flip it over and remind yourself of what you are supposed to know. And when you do this,
read the information out loud. If you can remember what you need to know about Power, put the card aside.
9 When I was at university and it came to start revising for the final exams, I looked at my notes and I couldn’t make any sense of
them. I’d obviously missed lots of things out during the lectures because I couldn’t write fast enough (and because they weren’t in
the lecture!). Panic set in. How can I revise if I can’t understand my own notes? So I borrowed other peoples’ notes. They’d missed
stuff out too, but once I’d borrowed several sets of notes, I was able to piece together what happened in the lecture, and supplement
my notes so that I could read them, understand them and revise from them. It is only when you understand something can you
revise it. And I had to do this for all the exams I was sitting. It took a while. But it was certainly not wasted time, however, because
the action of trying to understand and supplement my notes gave me a great start in learning it. In fact, by the time I had struggled
through this process of supplementing my notes to a point that I could understand them, I was pretty ready for the exams.
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Then go and do something else for a while. How long that while is could vary from minutes to days,
depending on how well you recalled the information about power. The better you remember the stuff, the
longer you should leave it. And then test yourself again on the Power card.
You will build up a stash of lots of cards. You could group them by subject and topic. Then, one of
the ways of learning about C1 Coordinate Geometry would be to take out your C1 Coordinate Geometry
cards, shuffle them, and test yourself on twenty of them. Those that you could remember, put to one side.
Those that you couldn’t, put back into the remainder of the twenty cards and shuffle them again. That
way that card will come up again soon. Continue this until you can remember all the cards.
By increasing your spacing between sessions using the C1 Coordinate Geometry cards, you will become
more certain of mastery: you will lock the information firmly into place. See, for example, Dunlosky et al.
(2013) and Roediger and Pyc (2012).
There are well-designed electronic flash card systems, such as Anki that have built into them the ap-
propriate spaced repetition time to optimise the rate of learning new material. You should check Anki
out. I intend to try and produce my own flash cards for A-level Maths and Physics in Anki as soon as
procrastination allows.
If you have different decks, one for each subject topic, then you could practice with the C1 Coordinate Ge-
ometry cards, then practice with the Unit 1 Electricity cards, then go back to the C1 Coordinate Geometry
cards. That would be an example of...
9 Interleaving
Interleaving is doing a mixture of different types of activity as you study.
For example, don’t spend the whole night studying nuclear physics. Split up your study periods (see
Section 13) so that you study nuclear physics for a while, then switch to integration by substitution. After
that, you could go back to nuclear physics again.
So you are just mixing up different topics in one study session, like the layers in a sandwich.
Or you could interleave when you spend one study period doing your differentiation homework. Let’s say
that you had been tasked with doing six problems from Exercise 7C from your textbook. After doing two
of the questions, go and do a question from Exercise 7B. Then do two more of the questions from your
homework. Then do a question from Exercise 7A. Finally finish off doing the last two questions from your
homework.
Why? Research has shown (Rohrer and Pashler (2007)) that it can be a waste of valuable learning time
spending all your time on one activity. Once you have grasped an idea, overlearning it (continuing practice
when something is understood) does not reap any additional benefits.
Instead, if you switch your brain to think about something else for a while, and then come back to your
original work, then you will start to learn about when to apply a particular technique, as well as how to
apply it. Because you know that Exercise 7C is testing your ability to differentiate using the chain rule,
you know that you need to apply the chain rule to every question. But by looking at other differentiation
questions for a while, then coming back to Exercise 7C you will be learning under what circumstances it
will be necessary to use the chain rule.
And that’s really important for the exam, because they don’t ask you questions like “Differentiate ... using
the chain rule”. They ask questions like “Differentiate ...”. They don’t tell you which technique to use. It’s
up to you to learn when a technique should be used, as well as how to use it.
Interleaving helps you do just that.
10 Regular Testing
There is powerful evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of testing as a way to reinforce, deepen and
enrich learning. In articles for the New York Times, science writer Benedict Carey (Carey (2010), and Carey
(2014)) shares evidence from Roediger and Karpicke (2006) and Pennebaker et al. (2013) that illustrates the
power of testing.
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Practice testing works. If you want to do well on a test or on an exam, you need to practice first. It may
be obvious to you that if you want to study to take an actual exam, then you need to do some past exam
papers as practice. But for the same reason, it’s good to practice for tests!
• The Cue: this is the trigger that launches you into zombie mode. The ping of a text arrival, for
example.
• The Response: this is your zombie mode. It’s what you do following the cue. Read the text,
obviously.
• The Reward: Habits reward us by giving us small dollops of pleasure. Procrastination is an easy
habit to develop because the reward (moving your mind to something more pleasant) happens so
quickly. But good habits can also be rewarded. Findings ways to reward good study habits is vital
to escaping procrastination.
• The Belief: habits have power because of your belief in them. For example, you might feel that you’ll
never be able to change your habit of leaving things until the last moment. To change the habit, you’ll
need to change your underlying belief.
The trick to changing your behaviour is to look at your reaction to a cue. The only place you need to apply
willpower is to change your reaction to the cue.
So the secret to eliminating procrastination is to:
• The Cue: Look for the cues in your life. You need to identify as many of these as you can!
• The Response: Prevent the cues from affecting you. If you are a slave to your phone, then when you
want to study, turn it off. “Whoa! Turn off my phone? No way, man!” But...as you will see in Part II,
you will only need to do this for a short amount of time.
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• The Reward: Reward yourself for the work you do. If you like films, well, watch one. The thing is
to develop a routine that includes rewards. And you will find that a feeling of accomplishment for
completing a task is quite often its own reward. Coffee. Texting. Web surfing. Start to think of these
things as rewards for activity.
• The Belief: Start believing that your new system will work (it will!) and that it will see you safely
through your exams (it will do that too!). A powerful tool here is mental contrasting: compare where
you are now with where you want to be. Because of this system, you will achieve what you want to achieve!
And you can start putting this into practise by focusing on process rather than product. That means con-
centrating initially on just getting into the routine, without worrying too much about what you actually
accomplish in your routine.
In Part II we will discover that the best way to work is to do little bits of work, separated by breaks. I call
this little bit of work (with no distractions) followed by a break a sprint. So when you start working in
sprints, just work. Don’t get hung up on what you are achieving. Achievement will come. Just get into
the new routine of a bit of work, followed by a reward. Bit of work followed by a reward.
Barbara Oakley devotes a lot of her book to tackling procrastination. After reading this document, and
you still have procrastination issues, then I would strongly advise you to get her book, and look at the ideas
that she and a lot of her students have come up with for getting to grips with this pernicious devil.
Test yourself On everything. All the time. Flash cards are your friend.
Get into Teach Mode Learn things as if you had to give a presentation on Friday. In fact, why don’t you
give a presentation on Friday? You could give it to your Mum, or the dog.
Space your repetition Spread out your learning of a given topic and do a little every day.
Do a mixture of activities as you practice Never spend too long doing one particular kind of thing, such
as solving problems, using flash cards, reading, writing a report. Mix it up and work on different kinds of
activities. Do a little of each.
Alternate different problem-solving techniques as you practice Even when you are doing homework
questions, mix up the kind of questions you are doing, so that you learn when to use a technique as well
as how to use a technique.
Take breaks If you get stuck on something, take a break. Do something else for a bit. Come back to it
later, and quite often you get a different insight into your problem.
Get into focused mode When you study, split your study time into short lumps of time when you can
fully concentrate on something. Eliminate distractions during this time. Then...take a break.
Eat your frogs first Start working on the hardest things first. If you get stuck, switch to something else.
Then come back to the hard stuff, ..., switch, ...
Make a mental contrast Imagine where you have come from, and constrast that with where your studies
will take you. Remember your dream!
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Reading passively Sitting passively, and letting your eyes run over the page. Unless you can prove that
you can recall the information in the book, reading is a complete waste of time.
Highlighting This is a really good technique to fool yourself into thinking that you know something.
But actually, all you’re doing is moving your hand.
Glancing at a problem solution and thinking you know how to do it This is one of the worst errors
students make when they study. You need to be able to solve a problem step by step, without the solution
in front of you.
Repeatedly solving problems of the same type that you already know how to solve If you were a
footballer, and you’re really good at heading, would you prepare for the final this coming Saturday by
only practising your heading?
Letting study sessions with friends turn into chat sessions If you work in groups occasionally (a very
good thing!), then make sure that the members of the group focus on the work before enjoying the fun.
Neglecting to use the textbook before you start working on problems Would you dive into a pool
before you learn how to swim?10
Not clearing up things you don’t understand There are many ways of doing this: your teachers, tutors,
peers, books, YouTube, the internet in general...
Thinking that you can learn deeply while you are being constantly distracted Every tiny pull toward
a text, an email, a conversation means that you have less brain power to devote to learning. So it won’t
happen as well as it could.
Not getting enough sleep Your brain pieces together problem-solving techniques while you sleep. It also
practices and repeats whatever you put in mind just prior to falling asleep. Prolonged fatigue builds up
toxins in the brain that get washed away during sleep. If you don’t get a good night’s sleep before a test,
nothing else you have done to prepare for the test will matter.
10 Actually, I did once. Well, the equivalent, anyway. Nearly drowned. Seriously.
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Part II
The Practice
So...how do you go about putting all this theory into practice? You use the strategies that are presented in
this section. And they fall into three main categories:
• The “Sprint”,
• The “Study Cycle”,
• Preparing for tests and exams.
Preparing for tests and exams seems a pretty obvious thing you might want to do on a course. And you’re
right. I’ve covered the topics of revision and exam technique in another document (Smith (2015)).
But what is a “sprint”, and what’s the “Study Cycle”, then? Aha! I’m glad you asked!
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13.3 Summary
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• Paraphrasing is better for learning than transcribing text verbatim. Mark Twain is often credited with
this famous quote: “College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’
lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.” We must guard against this. If you think
about what you are writing as you write it, learning may well occur! If not, ...
• What software tools do you use to take notes? What do you do if there is an important graph to
copy? Or some other important and complex picture? Or a table? Mathematical equations?
If you miss a class, borrow someone else’s notes (or the notes from more than one someone!) and create
your own notes for the class.
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15.4 Assessment
By engaging in self-evaluation, you can see how well your learning is progressing. Maybe you were trying
flash cards this study session. Did they work? Maybe concept mapping would have been better? Are you
having serious trouble understanding a certain topic? If so, you have identified that you need help. Get it!!
15.5 Summary
For each class of the course...
16 What to Do in a Sprint
Hang on. You’ve talked about sprints in Section 13. Why didn’t you put this stuff in that section?
I’m interleaving! Cunning, eh?
So...what do you do when you are in the “active learning task” bit of a sprint, all by your own self? Well,
I’ll tell you. You can do one of these things:
That’s it.
Let’s cover each of these in turn.
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The thing you will probably do most often in a sprint is read stuff. If you can’t read, learning is much
harder. So I’m going to tell you how to read. “What?”, I hear you cry, “I know how to read!!”. Do you,
indeed...
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• What definitions are there? How many of them are there? Will I have to remember them?
• v = f λ is an equation. Is that the same equation as described in the section “The Equation of a
Progressive Wave”? If not, what’s the difference?
• What on Earth is superposition? Why is it important?
• What on Earth is phase difference? Why is it important? In fact, what is phase for that matter? What’s
the difference between phase and phase difference?
• Why are there different graphs denoting displacement against distance and displacement against
time? What’s the difference? Why are they important?
I could think of more, but that’s plenty for now. All that you need to know at this stage is that doing this
ask-yourself-questions-thing is really beneficial, before you start to read the stuff. You might not be very
good at asking questions yet. You will improve, fast, once you start getting into the habit of doing this
when you read.
And just as before, it’s much better if you write your questions down.
So how can we get answers to these questions? Well...we start reading, of course!!
16.1.4 ...Actively
The processes of recalling and paraphrasing, and the making of notes and outlines, should be done in a
way that includes other successful strategies: the creation and use of memory aids, flashcards, mind maps,
and concept maps; the generation of more questions; etc., etc.
And actively reading means that you also take advantage of your natural learning style. So whether you are
a visual, aural/auditory, read/write or kinaesthetic/tactile learner, then you should just do what comes
most naturally to you. I just want to make the point that when I spoke earlier about writing stuff down,
what I actually meant was record it somehow that fits in with your natural learning style.
I’m primarily a visual learner, so when I make notes, yes, there is quite a bit of text, but I also draw lots of
pictures: graphs, charts, tables, mind maps, concept maps, flow charts, etc., etc. I even do Integration by
Parts17 in a kind of picture. The idea is to actively record your learning session somehow. So if making a
video or writing a play so that you can act it out later works for you, fine!!
Reading actively also means that if you are doing a quantitative course, and there are examples in the text,
then you should work through them. This probably sounds really obvious now, and if it does, then perhaps
you are grasping these ideas! I know of a series of Mathematics textbooks that essentially only have section
titles, examples and questions in them. So almost all the teaching is done through examples. If you didn’t
do the examples, you wouldn’t learn anything.
17 Whatever that is!
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16.6 Summary
Here, then, is a summary of the typical things that you will do during your sprints.
Read Actively
17 Mistakes
Are msitakes good or bad? You know what? It entirely depends on when you make them.
Mistakes are great if you don’t make them on your final exam. Then they’re pretty naff. But right up to
that point, mistakes represent a golden opportunity (Zull (2012)). When you do your homework without
access to the solutions (that are all too easily found on-line these days), and you make mistakes, you are
going through the training program that your brain needs to be able to tackle the final exam without
internet access.
So don’t worry about making mistakes as you study. As long as they are your mistakes, and you have tried
to tackle the problem meaningfully, then you will learn from the mistakes you make. But to do that, you
need to analyse them. That means you need to explain (at least to yourself) what each mistake was, and
what you should have done instead.
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Remember:
Attend
Set up a good environment Sprints:
the Class
Think about your learning level
Get into Teach Mode Review the Material
Regular Spaced Repetition
Regular Self-Testing
Interleaving
The
Preview the Study
Material Cycle
On to the Sprints:
next class...
Read Actively
Do Some Work
No Solve Problems
Assess your in Teach Mode
Teach Stuff
Learning
Create Exams
Learn Stuff
Sprints:
Yes Do
Past Paper
Questions
Sprints:
Plan and
Timetable Understand Revision
Your Revision as Much as
Possible
Sprints:
Learn
as Much as
Possible
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sin2 ( x ) + cos2 ( x ) ≡ 1
1 + cot2 ( x ) ≡ cosec2 ( x ) (2)
2 2
tan ( x ) + 1 ≡ sec ( x )
I could just learn the equations and hope I remember them when it comes to exam time. But as I’ve said,
for me that’s not the greatest plan21 .
Instead, how about learning this picture: I don’t know about you, but I find learning pictures easier than
1
sin( x )
x
cos( x )
learning words and equations. Now if we know this picture, then we can work out what all the three equations
are that we need to learn. Let’s see how we can do this. First, we know Pythagoras’ Theorem. And our
picture is of a right-angled triangle, so we can just use that directly. That gives us the first equation:
Now to get the other equations, instead of learning them, we can use what we already know. Let’s start
with Equation (3), and divide both sides of the equation by sin2 ( x ):
sin2 ( x ) cos2 ( x ) 1
2
+ 2
≡ 2
sin ( x ) sin ( x ) sin ( x )
⇒ 1 + cot2 ( x ) ≡ cosec2 ( x )
And if start with Equation (3), and divide both sides of the equation by cos2 ( x ):
sin2 ( x ) cos2 ( x ) 1
2
+ 2
≡
cos ( x ) cos ( x ) cos2 ( x )
⇒ tan2 ( x ) + 1 ≡ sec2 ( x )
So we have a choice: we can either try and learn the equations (2) directly, as three unrelated facts, or
we can learn the picture (Figure 6) and a process. The three equations (2) are known as the Pythagorean
Identities. It’s not hard to see why. They are all equivalent to Pythagoras’ Theorem through Figure 6 and a
bit of algebra. Learning the picture and the process shows a lot more mathematical sophistication, I think.
It shows a level of understanding, doesn’t it?
A.1 Understanding...
I have been teaching mathematics now for over 40 years, and I have never learned equations (2). I don’t
need to22 . I know where they come from. So if I need one of them any time, I just work it out.
Another thing that’s really interesting about equations (2) is that they divide the six fundamental trigono-
metrical functions, sin( x ), cos( x ), sec( x ), tan( x ), cosec( x ), and cot( x ) into three pairs of functions: (1) sin( x )
1 cos( x ) 1
20 If you’ve never come across cot( x ), cosec( x ) or sec( x ) before, they are defined like this: cot( x ) ≡ tan( x )
≡ sin( x )
, cosec( x ) ≡ sin( x )
and sec( x ) ≡ cos1( x) . Why we need these things, I’ll never know. We could so easily do without them altogether.
21 There are worse plans. The Scottish army deciding to invade England during the Black Death, for example.
22 So I can keep my brain clear so that it can remember useful information, like who won the F.A. Cup in 1948.
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and cos( x ), (2) sec( x ) and tan( x ), and (3) cosec( x ) and cot( x ). It turns out that these pairs of functions are
related in other ways too. By differentiation and integration, for example. So we are forging links between
different areas of our subject. We are forming patterns. Chunks, as Barbara Oakley calls them. General
principles that we can use in other situations.
And while we’re on the subject, there’s another thing I’d like to get off my chest: I called Figure 6 “My
Replacement for SOH CAH TOA!” for a good reason. I never use SOH CAH TOA. It’s crap. All you need
is Figure 623 . It’s interesting that Figure 6 is actually the definition of sin( x ) and the definition of cos( x ).
SOH CAH TOA is built on top of Figure 6. But Figure 6 is easier to use than SOH CAH TOA!! So why
do we teach something artificial, something that’s only been created to help learn Figure 6, when learning
the picture is easier???
B Limits on Integrals
When you first start to integrate functions, you come across the idea of limits on integrals. These are
normally written at the top and the bottom of the integral sign like this:
Z2
is that 0 and 2 are values of x. Every book you have ever seen, and every exam, write limits this way.
The problem with this is that when you start learning about integral transformation techniques such
as “substitution”, where the idea is that you transform the integral by changing the variable from x to
something else, then you open up the way for a specific type of mistake.
When you transform an integral like (4), you do it by introducing a new variable, u, say, that you hope
will transform the integral from something you can’t integrate, into something you can integrate. And you
could do that like this. Let u = x + 5. Then when you go through the motions, and you transform the
function (the ( x + 5)2 bit), and you transform the differential (the dx bit), into u-stuff you get
Z2
u2 du (5)
0
And at this point it’s really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have done all the transforming
you need to do. As I very often used to do. But those limits are values of x, not u! We have to transform the
limits as well! And when you write your limits as in (5) (as everyone does), then you can easily fall into
this trap.
However, if you wrote your limits like this
xZ=2
( x + 5)2 dx
x =0
(showing very clearly that 0 and 2 are both values of x) then after transforming the function and the
differential, you get
xZ=2
u2 du
x =0
and it’s really clear that you have not transformed your limits yet. You have vastly reduced the possibility
of making the I-forgot-to-transform-my-limits-again mistake.
23 And the definition of tan( x ), actually.
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Notes
1 This is an endnote.
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