A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)

by Barbara Oakley

shimmering

ceme...

scintillating

rote,

Focused practice and repetition—the

creation of memory traces—are

impec...

clumsy

cumbersome

pertain

acronyms,

Continental drift!

one of the first steps toward gaining expertise in math and science is to create conceptual chunks—mental

mental leaps

cognitive load—so

The first step in chunking, then, is to simply focus your attention on the information you want to chunk.

gist

Understanding is like

superglue

helps hold the underlying memory tra...

encomp...

solid expertise!

Closing the book and testing yourself on how to solve the

problems will also speed up your learning at this stage.

chunking is gaining context

when to use this chunk.

you see not only when to use the chunk,

but when not to use it.

Understanding the underlying concept

makes it easier to detect errors

when you mak...

(Trust me, you will make errors, and that’s...

phenomenon called ...

chunking may involve your learning how to use a certain problem-solving technique.

Context means learning when to use that technique

mantra

retrieval practice—is

far more effective than simply rereading the material.

You may be surprised to learn that highlighting and underlining must be done carefully—otherwise they can be not only ineffective but also misleading.

When marking up the text, train yourself to look for main ideas before making any marks, and keep your text markings to a minimum—one sentence or less per paragraph.

The only time rereading text seems to be effective is if you let time pass between rereadings so that it becomes more of an exercise in spaced repetition.

You don’t want to wait too long for the recall practice, so that you have to start the reinforcement

of the concept from scratch every time.

you’re learning with...

challe...

you rewrite your notes during the evening a...

Once you’ve got something down, you can expand the time between

“upkeep”

and eventually it can become close ...

unscru...