What Are You Reading 2016 - Page 14

On October 14 2016 01:41 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:


I've spent years defending the importance/relevance of the Nobel lit prize. It's not the end all be all but I always thought it did well as the standard bearer of literature's impact and place in society.

2016 just makes me feel like an idiot. Everyone who has said the Nobel is a farce has been proven correct.

On October 19 2016 10:22 dmnum wrote:
Mainly that spaced rereadings is the best way to learn(the best way is spaced retrieval, i.e. trying to remember what you studied) and that quizzes should be done after studying a topic, but not before(studies show that you learn more if you do quizzes before and after studying).

Edit: also that you learn better when the studying is easy(it's better to have some difficulty, as long as you can overcome it).

On October 19 2016 14:48 dmnum wrote:
Sorry, was in a rush and couldn't reply properly.

Anyway, on the quizzing before and after testing, they basically did a study where they made one group students try to solve a problem before being told the answer, while another group was presented with the answer being made to solve the problem. One month later they did quizzed both groups and the first one did better than the second.

The part about studying being better when it's hard branches into a lot of studies, so I won't cite them all, but here's two examples: once again they took two groups of people to teach how to play hockey: one practiced a part of the game(skating, for example) until they had mastered it, and then moved on to the next task(let's say shooting the puck), while the other practiced a little bit of skating, then moved on the shooting the puck, and so on, before training skating again. The latter group felt frustrated about being made to move on to another thing before mastering the first because, according to them, that made them feel like they learned almost nothing; however, on latter tests, they did better than the first group;
On another test, they made one group read a topic twice, while another group read it once and then tried to remember what they read without looking at the book; the second group learned better.

There's a bunch of examples, and all the studies mentioned in the book were published in peer reviewed periodicals, so it's credible.

This article presents some of the points made in the book: https://info.maths.ed.ac.uk/assets/files/LandT/what_works_what_doesnt.pdf

Of course it doesn't go in depth into the topics, and the book contains a lot more information, but it's only 8 pages so it's worth a quick read.