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| Writer | Barbara Oakley |
| Category | Self Development |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Penguin Group |
| Publish Date | 2014 |
| Pages | 269 |
| File Size | 3 MB |
| File Type |
Your brain has amazing abilities, but it did not come with an instruction manual. You’ll find that manual in A Mind for Numbers. Whether you’re a novice or an expert, you will find great new ways to improve your skills and techniques for learning, especially related to math and science.
A Mind for Numbers PDF – Barbara Oakley
Henri Poincaré, a nineteenth-century mathematician, once described how he cracked a difficult mathematical problem that he had been working on intensively for weeks without success. He took a vacation. As he was getting on a bus in the south of France, the answer to the problem suddenly came to him, unbidden, from a part of his brain that had continued to work on the problem while he was enjoying his vacation.
He knew he had the right solution even though he did not write down the details until he later returned to Paris. What worked for Poincaré can work for you too, as Barbara Oakley explains in this insightful book. Surprisingly, your brain can also work on a problem even while you are sleeping and are not aware of anything.
However, it only does this if you concentrate on trying to solve the problem before falling asleep. In the morning, as often as not, a fresh insight will pop to mind that can help you solve the problem. The intense effort before a vacation or falling asleep is important for priming your brain; otherwise, it will work on some other problem.
A Mind for Numbers PDF – Barbara Oakley
There is nothing special about math or science in this regard— your brain will work just as hard at solving social problems as on math and science problems, if that is what has been on your mind recently. You will find many more insights and techniques about how to learn effectively in this fascinating and timely book, which looks at learning as an adventure rather than hard labor.
You will see how you can fool yourself about whether you actually know the material; you will find ways to hold your focus and space out your practice; and you will learn to condense key ideas so you can hold them more easily in your mind. Master the simple, practical approaches outlined here, and you will be able to learn more effectively and with less frustration. This wonderful guide will enrich both your learning and your life.
This book can make a profound difference in how you look at and understand learning. You will learn the simplest, most effective, and most efficient techniques researchers know about how to learn. And you’ll have fun while you’re doing it. What’s surprising is that a lot of learners use ineffective and inefficient strategies.
In my laboratory, for example, we have surveyed college students about their learning. They most commonly use the strategy of repeated reading —simply reading through books or notes over and over. Other researchers and I have found that this passive and shallow strategy often produces minimal or no learning.
A Mind for Numbers PDF – Barbara Oakley
We call this “labor in vain”—students are putting in labor but not getting anywhere. We don’t engage in passive rereading because we are dumb or lazy. And we do it because we fall prey to a cognitive illusion. When we read material over and over, the material becomes familiar and fluent, meaning it is easy for our minds to process.
We then think that this easy processing is a sign that we have learned something well, even though we have not. This book will introduce you to this and other illusions of learning and give you tools to overcome them. And it will introduce great new tools, such as retrieval practice, that can have a powerful effect in boosting the “bang for your buck” from your time spent in learning.
It’s a deeply practical yet inspiring book that helps you see clearly why some approaches are so much more effective than others. We’re on the edge of an explosion in knowledge about how to learn most effectively. In this new world of insight, you’ll find A Mind for Numbers to be an indispensable guide.
A Mind for Numbers PDF