Taking notes during class?
Studying one topic at a time?
Having the same place to study each day?

As it turns out, alll are exactly the opposite of the best strategies for learning.This time last year we looked at basic learning strategies (test erly test often) and the strategy known as Mindburning – controlled unforgeting.

http://whatilearnttoday.com.au/how-to-learn-new-stuff

http://whatilearnttoday.com.au/mind-burning-how-to-learn-new-stuff-part-2

Geek Dad recently blogged about his interview with Robert Bjork, the director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab, a distinguished professor of psychology, and a “massively renowned expert on packing things in your brain in a way that keeps them from leaking out.”

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/01/everything-about-learning/

“People tend to try to learn in blocks,” Bjork said. “Mastering one thing before moving on to the next.”

Instead of doing that Bjork recommends interleaving. The strategy suggest that instead of spending an hour working on your tennis serve, you mix in a range of skills like backhands, volleys, overhead smashes, and footwork.

Similarly, studying in only one location is great as long as you’ll only be required to recall the information in the same location. If you want information to be accessible outside your dorm room, or office, or nook on the second floor of the library, Bjork recommends varying your study location.

The third tip relates to the the spacing effect, which we discussed in the WILT post on mind burning.

“If you study and then you wait, tests show that the longer you wait, the more you will have forgotten,” Bjork said.”But here’s the cool part: If you study, wait, and then study again, the longer the wait, the more you’ll have learned after this second study session.

Bjork explains it this way: “When we access things from our memory, we do more than reveal it’s there. It’s not like a playback. What we retrieve becomes more retrievable in the future. Provided the retrieval succeeds, the more difficult and involved the retrieval, the more beneficial it is.”

“Bjork also recommends taking notes just after class, rather than during — forcing yourself to recall a lecture’s information is more effective than simply copying it from a blackboard. You have to work for it. The more you work, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more awesome you can become.”

More details ar in Geek Dad’s blog on Wired.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/01/everything-about-learning/

So there you go Oliver and Harry – no excuse for forgetting anything during Year 12 this year.

Can you compress two hundred years of social and economic history into a 4 minute youtube video?

Yes, if you are Hans Rosling, The Jedi Master of Data Visualization, (and the Professor of International Health at the Karlinska Institute.)

Prof Rosling is also director of the Gapminder Foundation - ’Unveiling the Beauty of Statistics for a Fact Based World’.

Gapminder is a non-profit foundation based in Stockholm. Our goal is to replace devastating myths with a fact-based worldview. Our method is to make data easy to understand. We are dedicated to innovate and spread new methods to make global development understandable, free of charge, without advertising. We want to let teachers, journalists and everyone else continue to freely use our tools, videos and presentations.

In the video below, life expectancy is plotted against income for every country since 1810. “Instead of studying history one year at the university, you can watch this video for less than five minutes”, according to Gapminder. 

(Australia is a small red circle that leads the world during the early 1900s and thereafter always orbits like a moon around the US)

This particular segment was made as part of a BBC Documentary, the Joy of Stats. You can experience your own joy at Gapminder World. (One for you, Laura)

What is the single best thing we can do for our health?

Stop smoking? Lower our cholesterol? Take Aspirin? Lose weight? Take vitamins?

There is one treatment that has been demonstrated in multiple studies to improve life expectancy (23%), decrease cardiovascular disease, prevent progression to diabetes (58%), prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s (50%), improve the pain and disability of arthritis (47%), prevent fracture in osteoporosis (41%), reduce the incidence of anxiety (48%) and depression (47%), reduce fatigue and increase overall quality of life.

And that treatment is……….

Over to you Professor Mike Evans.

We have previously looked at  ’Reckoning the Risk’ by Prof Gerd Gigerenzer.

At the beginning of the last century, HG Wells is reported to have predicted “Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write”. In this century, Prof Gigerenzer challenges our innumeracy, encouraging us to ‘dare to know’ through the habit of sound statistical thinking. He advises us to insist on receiving appropriate numeric representation and to develop the tools to communicate risk accurately to our patients.

The NNT is a website that collects the ‘Number Needed to Treat’ from hundreds of studies for treatments and interventions that we may be considering for our patients.

They have an excellent primer on the NNT, absolute risk and relative risk. It  is accompanied by this video.

Alex took this photo on the Tokyo metro.

You wouldn’t want this dude’s Nodogoshi to be any more elaborated.

Biiru kudasai.

Its more fun to buy running shoes than it is to go running.

Merlin Mann

TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) today has a list of the top apps to kickstart your New Years Eve Resolutions.

How’s your 2Do list? Scanning? Note syncing? Diet? Fitness?

How about keeping track of your resolutions? There’s an app for that, too.

There’s no problem that technology can’t make more complicated. .

Meanwhile, Lifehacker encourages us all to start 2012 with ‘Inbox Zero’.

Cool, only 2400 emails to go!.

New Year’s Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

Mark Twain

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.” 

W.C. Fields

Professor Richard Wiseman has tracked 5000 people attempting to stick to their New Years Resolutions.

10% succeeded.

What factors were common to those who were successful?

• 1. They broke their goal into a series of smaller steps.
• 2. They told their friends and family what they were trying to achieve.
• 3. They regularly reminded themselves about the benefits of reaching their goal.
• 4. They gave themselves a small reward each time they obtained one of their small steps.
• 5. They mapped out their progress.