Visualization, memory, reading and research skills
The idea comes from Scott Young newsletter. As programmers, we often think about how the end result will look and interact before we write code. We build up tests and “stubs” – empty programs that behave just like the final program would. By doing this we break a complex task into many simple tasks. Now …
Many scientific discoveries have been found through luck and attention to details. Probably 80% of debugging any programmist performs involves attention to details. Good user interface and graphical design require immense attention to details. Ability to observe minor changes and make good and quick decision is important in all human endeavors I can think of, …
VS on Facebook: Is it a good idea to use mind maps for formulas (like in Physics, Math etc) Lev Goldentouch: Using mindmap for formulas is pretty much what a computer does. As human, I would also dual code small funny animations of each specific factor in the formula and why/how it changes the end …
Memory champion Wang Feng uses a very simple and efficient chunking method. Wang Feng is arguably the fastest mnemonist alive, so his method works. The simplicity of this method is only superficial, and you need a lot of practicing to master it – more than other methods we teach. Influenced by the structure of his …
This great post by Dilbert creator argues that speed is the new intelligence. Is that really true? The intelligence discussed by Scott Adams has to do with common sense and big numbers. Technology facilitate access to people, ability to generate and test ideas, access to supporting information and knowledge. Simply by using information technology properly …
One of the things that limit our reading speed is the speed of creating markers. If we were required to create a marker per detail within a text, we would end up with a choice between 250wpm at 80% retention and 1000wpm at 20% retention. In fact, one of the reasons that other speedreading courses …
Once in a while we write about doodling (or freestyle annotation) and its benefits. Students drawing in their papers where mistreated by generations of teachers. They were asked to focus, to stop fooling around and to listen to the teachers. However, the human spirit is stronger than education fashions, and student persistently doodled in school …
Continue reading “Doodling at school and at work will boost your productivity”
A very small percentage of people (~2%) is born with extremely good autobiographic memory: they remember every student in their class and every event of their life. Yesterday I met some classmates whom I have not seen for 26 years. Some things remained the same, but one thing that changes was my perception of childhood. …
Continue reading “Building timeline and visualizing history”
We teach our students to preread, read and reread without stating where we learnt it ourselves. To fix this injustice I introduce so called SQ3R system that is commonly used in US schools. Survey. We also call this prereading. Usually we skim or scan the content before we read it to prepare our mind for …
Continue reading “Active reading: SQ3R system and preread-read-analyze cycle.”
Big data of all sorts is a good skill to have. There are many related skills: relational databases, nosql databases, data mining, natural language processing… Healthy control of each of this skills means good salary and many job openings. Personally I worked with several methodologies rather briefly, and while I have some skills and practice …
