BARBARA OAKLEY: It's sucha pleasure to be here. And I'd like tobegin by telling you a little story-- another one. And this story is about--well, I think all of us love to watch otherpeople, right? To some greateror lesser extent. And I love people watching. And so I have to tellyou about this one guy who was one of themost interesting people I've ever watched. And this was whenI was working down in Antarctica atMcMurdo Station, and this guy's name was Neil. And Neil was thisthin, wispy little guy with kind of ahigh-pitched voice. And he had a bighead, so he looked like this sort of upside-downexclamation point. And what Neil used to liketo do is he liked to pick up the phone and answer itwith a perfect imitation of the 6'8" gorilla of astation manager, Art Brown. So one day, phone rings. Neil picks it up, as usual. (IN DEEP VOICE) "Hello. This is Art Brown speaking." And it was Art Brown onthe other end of the line. So Art says, whothe heck is this? Or more unprintablewords to that effect. And Neil says, why,Art, this is you. I'm so glad you've finallygotten in touch with yourself. And so that's actually whatwe're going to do here today, is to help you to get morein touch with yourself and what you'redoing when you're doing one of themost important things you can do as a human being,and that is to learn new things. Now, to start, Ihave to tell you a little bit about mybackground and growing up. I grew up movingall over the place. By the time I'dhit 10th grade, I'd lived in 10 different places. Now, moving around a lotlike this has some benefits, but it also has some drawbacks,or potential drawbacks. And one of the thingsfor me was math is a very sequential topic. And if you miss it anywherealong the line, right? Somebody's a littlebit further ahead, and you're from the schoolwhere it was a little behind.
All of a sudden,you can actually fall off the bandwagon,and then you've fallen off. It's hard to get back on. And that's whathappened to me early on. I fell off the math bandwagon. Just said, I can't do this. I hate it. I really want nothingto do with it at all. Science is the same way. And so I basicallyflunked my way through elementary, middle, andhigh school math and science. And it's really funny,thinking back on it now, because I'm a professorof engineering. And I publish well insome of the top journals, so I do very wellas an engineer. But one day, one of my studentsfound out about my sordid past as a math flunky, and he askedme, he said, how'd you do it? How'd you change your brain? And I thought, youknow, how did I do it? I mean, looking back on it,I was just this little kid, and I loved animals, and Iliked fluffy, furry things, and I liked to knit, and I lovedlanguage and studying language. And at that time, thereweren't college loans that were relativelystraightforward to get. And so I really wanted to learn a language. And I couldn't affordto go to school, and so how couldI study language in that kind of situation? And there was oneway I could do it. I could actually goand learn a language and get paid for itwhile I was doing it. And that was to join the Army. And so that's what I did. I joined the Army. And there you see me,looking incredibly nervous, about to throw a hand grenade. And I did learn a language.
I learned Russian. And I ended up workingout on Russian trawlers, Soviet trawlers, upin the Bering Sea. And that's me standingon a bunch of fish there. I can still swearquite well in Russian, although the rest of theRussian's a little rusty. But I loved having adventuresand gaining new perspectives. And so I also ended upat the South Pole station in Antarctica. And that's whereI met my husband. So I always say, I had togo to the end of the Earth to meet that man, and I did. So the thing is, though,what was going on was I began to realizethat you know, I was always interested in thesenew perspectives, but they alwayssort of perspectives that I was kind ofcomfortable with somehow. You know, and havingadventures, that's sort of a comfortable thing. But I wasn't actuallykind of stretching myself to really have atotally new perspective, I thought back on theengineers that I'd worked with, WestPoint engineers, who were in the military. And I realized that theirproblem-solving skills were, in many ways, exceptional. They could think in a waythat I couldn't think. And I thought, youknow, what if I could read thesekinds of equations like they could read equations? What if I could, in somesense, learn the language that they were able to speak. Could I actually change mybrain to learn in that way? To learn what these people knew? And so as I began to try toanswer that student's question, how did you change your brain? I started working on a bookto kind of describe what some of these key ideas were. And while I wasworking on this book, I did things like I wentto ratemyprofessors.com. Probably a few of youwho've been in schools realize that that's apretty good website. And I looked to see who werethe top professors worldwide, teaching subjects likeengineering, math, chemistry, physics, economics, a lot ofreally difficult subjects. And a lot of veryrelevant subjects, as well, likepsychology, even English. How did they teach sopeople could learn, and how did theylearn themselves? And I also reached out totop cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists. And my backgroundalso informed this. I've taught for several decadesas an engineering professor, done active researchin active learning. And so all of these thingskind of combined together. And what I found that I thoughtwas very interesting was when I reached out to all theseprofessors, a lot of the ones in the STEM disciplinesin particular-- Science, Technology,Engineering, and Math-- used these approachesthat might involve things like metaphor or analogy. But they were veryembarrassed to say that, because other professorswould kind of be like, oh, you're dumbing things down. But it was actuallysomething that all of these top professors usedto more easily communicate the ideas. It was like thisshared handshake. They all knew howto do it, but they didn't realize theseother top professors were using the same approaches. So what I'm goingto tell you now is I'm going to giveyou some insight. This, these, are thekey ideas related to learning that all ofthese people have discovered. So first off, we know that thebrain is really complicated. So what we're goingto do is simplify it. And you can simplifythe brain's operation into two fundamentallydifferent modes. First one is what I'llcall focused mode, and the second is whatI'll call the diffuse mode. And this is actually-- itrelates to the default mode network and other related--there's some 24 or 25 so far-- neural resting statesthat have been detected. And so all of thesestates altogether, I'll just call the diffuse mode. And what can happen--I mean, our best way to really understandthese two different modes is to use a metaphor. And the metaphorwe're going to use is that of a pinball machine. And a pinball machine,you all know how it works. You just take the pinball andyou pull back on the plunger, and a ball was boinkingaround on the rubber bumpers, and that's how you get points.
And what we'regoing to do is we're going to take thatpinball machine, and we're going tosuperimpose it on the brain. And you see thebrain right here. Here's the little ears, andthere's the nose right there. And what we'regoing to do, we're going to take thatpinball machine and we're going to putit right on the brain. And there you go. There's the pinballmachine on the brain. And you can see how you canpull back on the plunger there, and you've got all theselittle pinballs in there, or the rubber bumpers,and they're all very close together. So what happens is infocused mode-type thinking, like what I'mshowing right here, you've got these closetogether bumpers, and you often have patternsthat are already here. For example, if you've alreadylearned how to multiply, and you're trying to doa multiplication problem, you would sit infocused mode, and you've got these patternsthat are already there. And you think a thought,and it takes off, and it moves roughlyaround the rubber bumpers along the pathways it'salready been in before, that you've developedas a consequence of previous learning. But what if the patternyou're trying to think is something new? What if you already knowabout multiplication, but you've neverencountered division before? So you're trying tounderstand this idea. Or the concept oflimits in calculus. How do you go at acompletely new idea that you've neverencountered before? Well, that's where thisother way the brain works, in diffuse mode thinking,can actually be a benefit. Now, take a look. Here's the representativeof the diffuse mode. And it's just an analogy,but it's a very good one that helps us understand. Look at how far apartthose rubber bumpers are. When you think athought in diffuse mode, the thoughts can rangemuch more widely. Now you can't think ina tight-grain fashion to actually solve theparticulars of a problem, but you can at leastget to a new sort of way of thinking about things thatyou couldn't have gotten if you were just in the focused mode. In fact, sometimes,when you're trying to solve a reallydifficult problem, the worst thing youcould do is just keep sitting there and focusingand focusing on it.
Because you can be up onthat part of the brain, so to speak, and yet you needto be in a completely different place. So the best thing todo when you're really stuck and frustratedon a problem is not to keep focusing on it. You actually need to getin a very different mode of thinking. And that's what'srepresented here. And so what thismeans practically for you is you're sitting there,you're working-- hey, get out. Go for a run. Go down and have a-- go takea shower if you need to. Or do something that reallygets your mind totally off it. Because when you'rein this mode, as long as your attentionis focused on that problem, you're still in thismode, and you can't get to this way of solving things. So how can thisplay out for people? If you look at thisguy right here-- he was SalvadorDali, one of the most brilliant of the Surrealistpainters of the 20th century. He's shown here withhis pet ocelot, Babou. And what Dali usedto do is this. He'd sit in a chair when he hadkind of an intractable problem with his paintings to solve. He'd sit, and he'd relax,and he'd relax away. And just as he'drelaxed so much, you know, kind of lettinghis mind run free, he'd have a key in his hand. And just as he'd relax somuch that he'd fall asleep, the key would fallfrom his hand, the clatter would wakehim up, and off he'd go with this new ideafrom the diffuse mode, taking it back to thefocused mode, where he could refine and really use them. So you might think,well, you know, that's just great for artists. But what if you're an engineer? If you look at this guy righthere, this was Thomas Edison. And what Edison used to do,at least according to legend, was he'd sit in a chair withball bearings in his hand. And he'd relax and relax,and then finally when he'd fall asleep,the ball bearings would fall from his hand. And whatever he'd, inhis very relaxed way, been thinking about,he'd be able to take some of those ideasfrom that mode and bring them back with himto the focused mode, where he could refine it, analyze,and come up with some of those brilliant inventions. So the lesson for us, outof all of this, is this. I'm giving some exemplaryinnovators in various fields. But whenever you'resolving a problem, even if it's aproblem that thousands or even millions of other peoplehave solved before, for you, it's the very first time thatyou've solved that problem. And you need to use some ofthese same creative approaches that these other brilliantthinkers have used. And what you wantto do, be aware of, is that you canbe in focused mode or you can be in diffusemode, but you can't really-- as far as we know, unlessyou're an exceptionally well-trained monk-- be inboth modes at the same time. So focused or diffuse. And you want todevelop both modes. Diffuse thinking isoften not conscious, but it is also learning. And so that's why thatrelaxation process can also be very important. Now I just wanted to giveyou a quick image here. This shows some of the brilliantconnectivity of the default mode network. See all these connectionshere between various aspects of the brain? This is a web forone mode of working, but focused mode hasa very different web. So if you're onlyfocusing, you're not making accessor getting access to a lot of the differentconnections that are available for you.
That's why going backand forth between modes can be so very important. Now, it takes time to do this. That's why you can'tsit down and just solve a difficultproblem immediately. You often have to go backand forth between the modes. And in some sense, youcan almost think of it like this is a weight-lifter. And a weight-lifter, hedoesn't cram the night before a big meet andbuild muscles like that. It takes time todevelop those muscles. In the same way, it takes timeto develop the neural scaffold that is involved in learningand in new thinking processes. But I know what you'rereally thinking. You may be thinking,I'm a procrastinator. I wait. Sometimes I don't, like,have time to do stuff, right? And so let's talk a littlebit about procrastination. And sometimes you can be areally effective human being but still procrastinateabout some things. And so in that sense,there are things to learn to help improveyour productivity and your effectivenessin what you do. So procrastination arisesin a very interesting way. Studies have shown that ifyou look at something you don't like, the pain centers ofyour brain actually activate. So if you look at a book fora subject you don't like, you can actually feel a twinge,and we can see it in the brain, if you're being imaged. So what do you dowhen you feel pain? I mean, it's the samepain as when you hammer your thumb with a hammer. Well, you have two differentways of handling it. The first way is you can workthrough it, like 20 minutes or so, and the pain willgradually disappear. But if you're like mostpeople, what you'll do is you'll just kind of turnyour attention away to something more pleasant, and guess what? You'll feel betterimmediately, right? And so in some sense,procrastination can actually be a littlebit like an addiction. You do it once,you do it twice-- it's not that big a deal. You do it a lotof times, though, and it actually can be very,very detrimental for your life. So I'm an engineer. I believe in totallypractical, useful things. So what I'm going to dois cut right to the chase and say here's themost effective way to help you dealwith procrastination. And it is simply to usethe Pomodoro Technique. And this is a technique thatwas developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. And it involved-- he calledit the Pomodoro Technique because he had atomato-shaped timer, and pomodoro isItalian for tomato. And what he woulddo is he would-- he recommends you seta timer for 25 minutes. Actually, you canhave different times. Different time lengths areuseful for different people. But you set it, ingeneral, for 25 minutes, and then you turnoff everything else. So no alarms, no instantmessages-- anything that can disturbyour concentration, you turn that off. And then you work with ascareful a focused attention as you can for those 25 minutes. Now sometimes, I'll beworking away, and I'll think, am I really focusingas hard as I can? And then I think,well, obviously not, because I just gotdistracted, and I'm wondering whether I'm focusinginstead of actually working. But I let thatthought just drift by, and then I get backto my work, right? And that's what you'redoing in this technique. You want to just keepyour mind on your work. And what happens isbecause you're only focusing on the task and thetime, and not the pain of "I must complete this task," itsomehow makes it so much easier to do. I mean, anybody,virtually anybody, can sit for 25 minutes and work. And then when you'redone, you reward yourself. And that reward isactually very important. Because what you'redoing is you're focusing duringthe focused mode, but then you want to trainyourself to relax, and enjoy, and do something different. Just surf the web, go out fora-- whatever floats your boat, you go off and do that. And this, actually,is important. Because we know that someaspects of learning take place during thisrelaxed process. So your tendency isto think, I'm not working when I'm not focusing. But you actually are. So it kind of givesyou a little bit of a feeling of reliefand accomplishment that is OK to relax. So a couple of little pointers. First, don't sit down anddo a Pomodoro and say, you know, I'm goingto finish off my work. Don't focus on the task. Only focus on the time. And that's the trickto this technique. Because it gets you pastthat pain in the brain and allows you to justrelax comfortably and get into the flow of the task.
The other thingis don't say, OK, I'm going to do 20Pomodoros today, and think that you're goingto beat yourself into more productivity that way. You want to just gradually startgetting used to this technique, and you'll see that itworks very, very well. Now another aspect that's reallyimportant, related to learning, is we've also beentold, hey, sleep's really important before a bigtest or something like that. Actually, sleep is importantin a lot of different ways. And I'm going totalk to you, just mention a little bit of one ofthe primary important reasons that sleep's importantfor learning. We've found that ifyou look at the cells-- these little circleshere represent cells, neurons, in the brain. And what happens whenyou go to sleep is this. Well, when you're awake--first, when you're awake, these metabolites willcome out, and they'll go in between the junctions. And they kind of sit outthere, and they're essentially toxins in your brain.
So when you'reawake, these toxins are gradually accumulatingin your brain. And they affect your judgment. That's why, when you stayawake a longer and longer time, it's more and moredifficult to think clearly. So when you go to sleep,though, here's what happens. Now watch very carefully towhat happens to those cells. You go to sleep, they shrink. I'll do that again,because I just have so much fun doing this. See? They shrink whenyou go to sleep. And because theyshrink, what that does is that allows fluidsto wash by the cells and wash these metabolites out. So a very importantpart of sleep is just the housekeeping,the cleaning that takes place, thatallows your brain to function so much more effectively. Now, another veryimportant aspect of sleep relates to neuralsynaptic growth. In this wonderful paper by GuangYang -- she's out of Langone-- is if you look atthe top picture, you can see herewhat's going on. This is the same neuronat the top and the bottom. The top neuron is beforelearning and before sleep. The bottom neuron is afterlearning and after sleep. All of these little trianglesor new synaptic connections. And so when you learnsomething and you go to sleep, that's when the new synapticconnections are forming. And this is what's goingon when you're learning. So that's why it's veryimportant, when you're learning somethingnew-- again, you don't want to cramat the last minute. You want to have many shortlearning periods, sleep, learning, sleep,and that's helping you build thatneural scaffold that helps you learn so much better. So there's anotheraspect of learning, and people often think thisis so completely disconnected from real learning thatthey even are taking away recess from kids. Because they're like, oh,that doesn't help them learn. Only when they're sitting infront of us, learning from us, that's when they really learn. But that's not true at all. We're now finding howincredibly important exercise is to the learning process. Now if you look here, thisstudy was is of a mouse, and they weretraining this mouse to differentiate betweentwo different symbols. And if you look in thebackground, what's happening is all of these blueblobs are old neurons. Now we used to think you areborn with all the neurons that you have, andthat's what you got for the rest of your life. Well, of course, now weknow that's not true. But it was wisdom, receivedwisdom, for many decades. And so what they found was--see these red lines here? Those are actuallythe new neurons that are being bornevery day in all of us, as well as in this mouse,in the hippocampus. And that is how--those are absolutely essential to our abilityto learn and remember new information. There's two ways to allowthese new neurons to grow and survive. One is you get exposedto new environments. That's why travelcan be so good. That's where yourlearning can be effective. And these kinds of things canhelp those new neurons survive. But the other way of helpingthese neurons survive that's just as powerful aslearning is simply to exercise. So exercise isprofoundly important. And I'm not talking,hey, I've got to be an Olympic weight-lifter,or be a marathon runner. Even simple walking canbe very, very effective. And I'm sure you'veall had the experience. You're all muzzy-brained, andthen you go out for a walk, and it clears upyour way of thinking. But even a few daysof an exercise program is doing much more than that. It's actually enhancingthe ability of your neurons to grow and survive. Now, if you look, there's a nameright here, Terrence Sejnowski. He was on one of theoriginal papers doing this original research. He's the Francis CrickProfessor at the Salk Institute, and she's also my colleague indoing the Massive Open Online Course that's based on the book. And Terry is-- he'sa remarkable guy. And it was really a lot of funmaking the Massive Open Online Course with him. And so we went and we didsome filming together. And so then I asked him, Isaid, well, Terry, you know, you're talking all thisstuff about the importance of exercise. Do you exercise? What do you do? And he's like, do I exercise? And what he does is he goes andevery day, or every few days, he goes down-- he'slike a mountain goat. The guy's 65, andhe climbs down.
You know, I'mscrambling after him. And he goes running on thebeach, just like you see here. And this is how hegets his exercise. I love how he finishes here. Watch this. [LAUGHTER] Look at that. So he is a legendin neuroscience. And I'm convincedthat part of it is because he usessome of these ideas that he's found in hisresearch to help him really keep his edge intellectually. Now, so let's just talk alittle bit about something called working memory. Working memory is how youkeep a brief thought in mind. It used to bethought that you had seven slots in workingmemory, and that's why you could hold a phonenumber of seven numbers. But now we're kind of realizingit's more like maybe there's four slots in working memory. So maybe for me, it's liketwo slots in working memory. But anyway, so youhave four slots, and it in your prefrontal--you can kind of think of it as your working memory,you're holding things in your prefrontal cortex. So I've got it kind ofsymbolized right there as your four slotsof working memory. So when you areremembering something, are thinking about somethingwith working memory, you can think ofit symbolically, at least, as something likean octopus, the Octopus of Attention, that reachesthrough those slots of working memoryand makes connections between different ideas. And that's why you can'thold too many ideas at once in your brain beforeyou get all confused. But what happens ifyou're multitasking? What happens if you've kindof got a little bit of an eye out here on some, you know-- amI getting an instant message? In some sense, that's liketaking one of those tentacles away of your working memory. And you don't havea lot of tentacles. So it really is kindof actually making whatever intellectualheft you have, you're kind oflosing some of it. You're getting a little stupiderwhen you're multitasking. So that's why careful focusedattention is so incredibly important, especially whenyou're working on something that's rather difficult. Now, I just like to contrastthis with the diffuse mode. The diffuse mode, it'sa lot of connections, but they're much more randomin how they take place. So how do you take somethingfrom working memory into long-term memory, whichis more distributed around in your brain? Well, the best wayis through practice. Practice makes, insome sense, permanent. The more you practice, thebroader that little neural pathway becomes, and the moredeeply embedded it becomes. So if you're learningsomething and you practice, those patterns getdeeper and deeper. And that's how you canlearn something and draw it from long-term memoryinto working memory. If you don't practice,what's going to happen is you've got thoseneurons, and it's almost like you've got these littlemetabolic vampires that just come and they suckthose patterns away before they can get deepened. And so that's why sometimesyou can learn something from a professor-- youeven understand it.
You've had that greatstroke of insight. You walk away. You don't look atit for a few days, and those littlemetabolic vampires just suck that pattern away. And you can't reallyremember or understand what you had learned previously. So the best way to getpatterns well-embedded in your long-termmemory is to practice through spaced repetition. So you might practiceMonday, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe again on Friday. And by spacing thingsout, you realize, now, that you're getting those newsynaptic connections growing every time you learn a littleand then you sleep on it. What you don't wantto do is this kind of thing, where you're justkind of cramming like crazy. And then look, thatmetabolic vampire just kind of sucks at all away, andyou're left with very little. It's hard to rememberwhat you were learning.
A good way to think about thisis just the analogy of a wall. If you're building a brickwall and you give yourself time between layersof mortar, it can set, and you can build asolid, sturdy wall. But if you don't, it'sall kind of a jumble. And it doesn't turn intoa really good structure that you can actually use. So let's go backagain, and we're going to talk a littlebit more, quickly, about attention, and therelationship with working memory. Now, if you lookhere, you can see you've got one slot in yourworking memory that's filled. When you have one slot filled,you could put other things in your working memory. But here's the trick. How do you get thingsinto just one slot? It turns out that if youcreate a chunk, one chunk, of the material, it's easyto pull into working memory. So here's what I mean by that. If you look here, here's a rawpattern of information, right? It's a puzzle. It's hard to figure out. It looks like a mad scramble. And look what's going onin your working memory. It's kind of goinga little crazy, trying to figure things out. In fact, recentresearch at Stanford has shown children who aretrying to learn math facts, their little prefrontalcortexes are going crazy as they try to assimilateand master the material. But once they've got thosemath facts down, this relaxes. What's actuallyhappening is this. They've got the essential idea,and what that essential idea is like is one smooth,single ribbon they can easily pull into working memorywhen they need to, in order to understand and makeconnections with other problems that they're trying to solve. Now, if you justmemorize and you're not understanding whatyou're memorizing, that's like creatingthat little circle there. And you can see it. You've got it. It really is a chunk. But you can't fit it verywell with other chunks. So there's another importantidea about chunking, and that's this. Once you've compressed anidea-- one of the most brilliant mathematicianswas mentioning one of the great aspects ofmath is simply that idea that you can compress it. You grapple, grapple, grapple,and all of a sudden, it clicks, and you've got it compressed. Once you've got itcompressed in a chunk, there's actually-- you canmake that chunk bigger, right? Just like learning alittle piece of song? You can actually learn anotherpiece and join them together, and you've got a bigger chunk. Or you can also learn similarchunks of other disciplines, and it's very, very helpful. That's an idea of transfer. But what you'rereally doing when you're learning andmastering a topic is you are, in some sense,creating a library of chunks. And you can draw onthat library and make connections between things. And that's how greatcreativity arises, is making connectionswith those chunks. So true experts often haveenormous libraries of chunks that they've developed. Now, when you'relearning, there's sort of a-- you can think of itas there's a top-down approach. So if you'relearning a new topic, you can almost think of itlike there's a chunk there, that's that tire, and here'sa chunk that's the man's face, and another tire. So you're learningall these chunks, and when you get themall kind of learned, it forms the bigpicture of the material. Even if you're missing afew pieces here and there, you've still gotthat big picture. But if you don't practiceand repeat and really master your chunks, it's like this. It's like you're trying toput together the big picture with chunks that are faint. And it's much harder to puttogether the big picture with that in mind. So again, as Iwas saying, you've got one ribbon of thought. That's a chunk. Here is another chunkin another field, but it's of a similar shape. And that's the idea of transfer. So if you're aphysicist, you may be able to learneconomics more easily, because some of the chunks arereally similar in their shape. If you are a languagelearner and you're learning math and science,there are meta-chunks available. For example, that idea ofpractice and repetition for language also applies inlearning math and science. So let's go to someother aspect that I think relates to learning. Some of you maysay-- so of you may have wonderful memories here. But some of you may wishyou had better memories. Well, let me kind of giveyou a little awareness. What you think may bea negative attribute actually can be a very,very positive attribute. It turns out that when you havea poor working memory, what that really means is youcan't hold things in mind very well, right? So you're looking at yourcolleague who can remember all this different stuff. They can hold it intheir working memory, turn somersaults with it, andcome up with new ideas really quickly. And you're luckyto remember what they were even talking about. But here's the thing. Research has shown that if youhave a poor working memory, and your four slotsare pretty weak, other stuff isalways slipping in. That's why you can't holdideas very well in your mind. But because the otherstuff is slipping in, you're actually more creative.
And research has shown thatif you have Attention Deficit Disorder, or your attentionwanders-- oh, shiny! Then what that meansis you have much more potential for being creative. Do you have to work harderthan some other people in order to make up for that? Yeah, you do. But that comeswith the trade-off that you are highly creative. So you can be very, veryvaluable in your job, even though you may haveto work harder sometimes to have that achievement. Now, you may say, well,that's all well and good, but I'm actually a slow thinker. I see these other people, andthey've got like a super race car brain. They can pick upthese ideas so fast, and I kind of movealong more slowly. Well, one of my heroesin the history of science is the Nobel Prizewinner Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who's known as thefather of modern neuroscience. Ramon y Cajal was not agenius, and he said so himself. Part of what he did was heworked hard and was persistent. But he said, thesewith race car brains-- which he was not--often race along and they jump to conclusionsthat he didn't miss. He would see them, and he wasmore flexible in his thinking. When he'd see a mistake,he would go, wait a minute. Whereas the race cardriver is so used to being right and beingfast that they're much less able to be persistentand to flexibly change in the lightof contradictory data. So if you have a slow brain,think of it like this. There's the person withthe race car brain. Great. But you're the hiker,and your experience is completely different. You walk along. You can see the little rabbittrails that they've missed. You can reach out andtouch the pine needles. You can smell the pine forest. All of this is missedby the race car driver. So your way of thinking canbe exceptionally valuable, as well. In fact, Maryam Mirzakhani,she won the Fields Medal, which is the topaward in mathematics, the equivalent for mathematicsof the Nobel Prize. And she was toldas a young person, you think too slowlyto be a mathematician.
Well, guess what? She's one of the mostcreative mathematicians alive. So if you think slowly,more power to you. You're doing good. Now, I also want tobring up another aspect, and that is the aspectof the impostor syndrome. This is so importantand so common. And what it is, it'sa feeling like you're the fake in the room, right? I'm working here? Maybe I'm working atGoogle and I'm really not as good as they say that I am,and I'm kind of an impostor here. And people feel thisall over the world, no matter what they're doing. You're a professor? Oh, wait a minute. You know, they're going to findout what the real truth is. I took a test, and I did well. But next time,I'm gonna fail it, because I know they'll findout what the real truth is. Really, really common feeling. And the best way to addressthe impostor syndrome is to just be awarehow common it is. So next time youhave a thought like, I'm really not asgood as they say I am, remember, that's theimpostor syndrome talking. And probably one of themost important things that I could bringup-- and so that's why I'm doing ittowards the end here-- is this idea of illusionsof competence in learning. Now, let's say thatsuddenly, for some reason, a bear came hurtlingout of this screen and rampaging through the room. Would you feel a surge ofadrenaline and nervous energy? I mean, suddenly your bodywould react physiologically to this feeling of intense fearas you realized the bear was actually in front of you. But the thing is, when you thinkabout learning situations-- we often say, studentswill come up and say, you know, I have test anxiety. That's why I didn'tdo well on this test. But for a lot ofstudents, sadly, sitting down andlooking at a test is like there's a bear there. They just realized,at that moment, that they really didn'tknow the material, even though theythought they did. So students, and people,can fool themselves that they're learningsomething when they're actually not learning something. So I'll give you some of thebest ways for truly learning something. First off, tests are the best. Test yourself oneverything, all the time. The same hour spenttesting as opposed to that hour spent studying,you will learn far more by taking a test. And use flashcards. Flashcards are not justfor language learners. Why let them have all the fun? Flashcards are for ordinary--for learning in math and science, for example. If you talk to great poets,what great ports will tell you is memorize thepoem, because you'll feel the passion and the powerof the poem much more deeply. Why should mathematicians notbe able to share in this fun? How about engineers? When we have equations, ifyou memorize the equation, and really look at what does itmean while you're doing that, it actually can bringout the richness of what you're learning.
And the thing is whenyou're having homework. Homework-- a lotof times, people make the mistakeof thinking, hey, you know, I did myhomework problem. And it's like saying,I'm learning the piano and I played this piano pieceone time, and so I've got it. Well, nobody doesthat when they're learning a musical instrument. And in the same way,when you're studying, you don't want to just doa homework problem once. You don't have timeto do all of them and kind of repeat them, butpick some of the key ones and see if you can do it again. Like practice it, andmaybe do it in your mind. Can you step throughall the steps? If you can play it almostlike a song in your mind, you've really got it. You've got it downas a chunk, and that can help build yourknowledge of the material. Now, probably the mostvaluable technique when you're trying to reallyunderstand something difficult is simple recall. When you're reading materialon a page, you read away, and your tendencyis to-- well, I'm going to underline it, right? Because when you're handis moving on the page, you think it's moving itinto your brain somehow. But it actually is not. So resist the urge. You can do a littlebit of underlining. But it's better to writeit, because you're helping to neurally encode these ideas. And then when youread the page, simply look away and seewhat you can recall. That, as it turns out, isvery powerful in building your understanding ofthe material in a way that other techniques, includingmind mapping and re-reading-- they're not nearlyas good as recall. So another very importantaspect is simply to study judiciouslywith other people, or talk about what you'retrying to understand with other people. Now, this has to bedone judiciously. Obviously, all learningdoes not take place in a cooperative fashion. Sometimes you have to go off. But when you'relearning something sort of in focused mode,there's a part-and-parcel of that focused mode,and that is a feeling that what you've justlearned is correct, right? This sort of rightness feeling. And the only way you can reallydisabuse yourself, sometimes, is to go off and bounce yourideas off of other people. And they can almost serve likea greater kind of diffuse mode, to help disabuse you whenyou do make mistakes. So judicious studying withfriends and conversation with colleagues canbe incredibly helpful. Also, explain in a way thata 10-year-old can understand. So frequently weexplain electricity, the flow of electricity, aswater, the flow of water. It's an analogy. It breaks down. All analogies break down. But Richard Feynman, theNobel Prize-winning physicist, used to go around and challengetop mathematicians in the world to explain in a simpleway, like in a way that their grandmotherscould understand, what they were doing. And you know what? They could. So this means that nomatter how difficult that problem is thatyou're working on, if you find a way toexplain it simply, you'll be able to understandit much more deeply. One thing to dois insert yourself into whatever the problem is. Like, here I am in acopper matrix, right? Barbara McClintock, the NobelPrize-winning geneticist, used to kind of imagine herselfdown at a genetic level, so she could understand and seehow the genes might actually be operating. So that's a trick that's oftenused by some of the greatest thinkers. Try to find a wayto get yourself into almost likea play, whatever you're trying to understand. If you want some moreinformation about what I've talked about here,there's much more in the book, "A Mind For Numbers." And there's a lotmore-- and it's all free-- in theMassive Open Online Course for Coursera, throughUC San Diego, Learning How to Learn. And that is the key,except for one thing. I'd like to leave youwith this last thought. We're often told,follow your passion. That is the key to everything. Just follow your passion,and your life will really be a better place for it. We're told that. But some things--your passion develops about what you really good at. And some things take muchlonger to get good at. So don't just followyour passions. Broaden your passions. And your lives willbe greatly enriched. Thank you very much.
MALE SPEAKER: Thanks, Barb,for the fantastic talk. Now we'll open it up fora few questions for Barb. Please raise your handif you have a question, and I'll bring themic over to you. AUDIENCE: So oneof the questions I had was that, you know,whenever learning things and tackling toughproblems, people always say, well, break itdown into smaller parts that you know how to do. And so I wondered how that fitsinto the focused and diffuse mode. Because that seems kind oflike breaking a diffuse problem into a bunch offocused problems. BARBARA OAKLEY: Actually,what that really relates to is that idea of chunks. So remember that you've gotfour slots in working memory. The more you can understandone simple part of it and make it intoa chunk, and then another little aspectof it, and make that into a chunk, andthen another one, so you're focusing to do that. And then in diffuse mode,you reaching up above and making theconnection randomly, when you're sleeping, outfor a walk, taking a shower, all these kinds of things. So they all are related, butactually, that's great advice. If you try to learn it all atonce, it's so overwhelming, it's like your little prefrontalcortex is scrambling madly, but it's overwhelmed. So you want to justget a piece of it, so you can drawthat up as a ribbon. Very good question. AUDIENCE: A chunkrequires understanding. So when there is achunk, that means that there was an experience ofunderstanding that led to that? BARBARA OAKLEY: Not necessarily. You can learn aword in a language, and you can not knowwhat that word means. And you can learn a lotof words in a language, but not know what that means. But if you do knowwhat they mean, it actually can make iteasier to remember that word, and easier to chunk that word. And easier to use those chunks,to put together sentences. So for the mostpart, we always want chunking to involveunderstanding, as well. But technically, no. You don't have tohave understanding. It's just that understandinghelps to kind of knit things together so that you canremember them more easily. For example, if I'm trying tolearn the word duck as "pato" in Spanish, if I'mjust going "pato," I'm trying toremember that word, I don't have any understandingof what it means, it's kind of harder to remember. But if I know that "pato"means duck, I can say, what if I'm trying to rememberit by having a little "pot-o" that my duck is floatingin, and that can help, that understanding, helpserve as a bridge to get it into my mind. So that's a really goodquestion, because people often think, oh, youbuild a chunk, it's automatic thatyou understand it. Not necessarily. But it's a very good thingto have, for the most part. I AUDIENCE: I wantedto ask-- we've mentioned that peoplewho've mastered one area can find it easier tolearn another area, because they're related chunks. BARBARA OAKLEY: Dependingon how close the area is. If you learn Icelandic,you're probably going to be able tolearn German more easily. But it may help alittle bit with some of the metacognitiveskills, as far as when you're learningChinese, but they're so very different that it'sonly those metacognitive sort of things that mighthelp with learning. And there's still a little bitof an aspect of fundamental "how do you structure alanguage" that I think is common to all languages. So it depends on howclose things are. But what I think is fascinatingis that you never know. That's why it's soimportant to have people coming from one field toa very different field, right? You're a deep sea diver,and you go into nursing. And you actually can bringsome really good ideas. And the best ideasare often developed by two differenttypes of people. One is someone who'svery young, so they haven't been sortof indoctrinated into "this is how you think." But the other isoutsiders, people who are trained in a differentdiscipline, who come and take an initial look and have fresheyes at what they're seeing. So, good questions.
AUDIENCE: Thanks. AUDIENCE: Maybe amore practical thing. I'm curious about youropinion, if you're familiar with the EverydayMath curriculum which a lot of schools are teachingnow, which, for example, my kids take. And for example,when they teach math, they emphasizegetting sort of almost like a number theory feel. Like they learn, like,four different ways to multiply instead of one,you know, the way we learned. And so for example,my kids, they're incredibly confused by this. I'm just wondering ifyou're familiar with it. If you have-- howdoes it fit into this, and if you thinkthat's-- have opinions. BARBARA OAKLEY: It'sdifferent in different parts of the country. And so I'm out of Michigan. We have different techniques. It depends. I think it depends on the kids. For some kids,it's great to learn all these different techniques. For other kids, youknow, just get one method down really well, and thenyou can climb up from there. My own personal opinionis one of the best math supplement programs issimply Kumon Mathematics. And I'm not a paid spokespersonfor Kumon Mathematics. But what they do is they havesimple methods of practice and repetition tohelp build mastery in your learning of mathematics. And they don't give you abunch of different methods. They just make sure youknow how to multiply. You know how to divide. And you really knowhow to do these things. So I guess my gut sense,and I haven't really encountered thatquestion before, is I think I'd prefer to seesomeone really learn it well using one technique. When you're older, youcan see other ways. But if you've got that oneway really good, you got it, and you can move up. But if you're learning toomany, it can be quite confusing. I suppose it would bethe equivalent of you're growing up learningeight languages at once. You know, somekids can handle it. But for a lot of kids, itmight be a little bit confusing to have too much going on atone time, especially about one thing. AUDIENCE: I have aquestion around reading, and not like math orsomething, but if I'm reading, say, a philosophybook by Nietzsche or Heidegger, for example, whichis 400 pages long. And I'm a slow reader. And I'm assuming I'ma very focused reader, because I do grasp and retainwhat I have read pretty well. But I'm incredibly slow. So do have any methods to figureout how to be a fast reader, but at the same time,be able to retain and deeply graspwhat I'm reading? BARBARA OAKLEY: Theshort answer is no. Research has lately shown thattechniques for speed reading are actually-- they'rea little bit, it seems, somewhat spurious. To read anything difficultmore deeply simply takes time. I always think, inthe back of my mind, STEM disciplines-- Science,Technology, Engineering, Math-- is really difficultfor a lot of people. But then there's philosophy. That's, I think, one of thehardest things in general for people to really grasp. It's incredibly important,but it's difficult. And I think just having a littleunderstanding and compassion for yourself, thatyou're actually tackling among humankind'smost difficult topics. And if it's slow, well,you're doing fantastic. Because I would be the same way. And I think a lot of peopleare really the same way. There's some probably super-fastMaserati brain thinkers who could buzz rightthrough that stuff. But they would missthings that you would see. AUDIENCE: I've been wonderinghow your techniques apply more generally to kids. And you brieflytouched, actually, on a previous question, practiceand repetition, practice and repetition. But more concretely, howdo you get, actually, kids interestedin mathematics, so that they keep on practicing? BARBARAhe way that we've been teaching kidsis, it's like, let's give them introducedto the fun stuff. We're going have themhands on, and we're going to have themdropping eggs, and doing all this exciting stuff. And then they get to college,and they hit calculus, and it's like thedeath march, right? They start dropping like flies. Because they'renot used to that. Everything's alwaysbeen fun, right? So we don't do that when we'reteaching things like music. We don't do that when we'reteaching foreign languages. But students fall inlove with those subjects because they can gainthe expertise-- in part through some drudging throughpractice and repetition. So I think part ofthe reason that we have so many kids in thiscountry fall off the bandwagon is we try to make everythingreally exciting and really fun. And we forget the lessonsthat language learners and musicians, andsports, people in sports, dance instructors--they all know that practice and repetitionis part of gaining expertise. And when we get thatincorporated back into the curriculum--it's there, but it's not nearly as sound asit is in many other countries. Which is why I think wesee so many people coming to this country with a loveand a mastery of learning in science and in mathematicsthat is not growing organically, because we're notintroducing kids in the United States to some ofthese ideas of also, the supplemental importanceof practice and repetition. So those are my thoughts. We do do a little bit ofit, but really not enough. Because for a longtime, sadly, there's been this feeling that toomuch practice and repetition in mathematics willkill your creativity. Instead of the reality,which is every great expert has to have practiceand repetition with what they're learning. So those are mythoughts on that. AUDIENCE: Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hi. So understanding is important,and context is important. And speaking of that, so therecould be like top-down approach and bottom-up approach. So what do you think is better? Is it better tounderstand the big picture and then try to study subject? Or it's better tostudy the small chunks and build thisunderstanding from-- or maybe we have to mix it? BARBARA OAKLEY: You'vegot it exactly right. You don't want to be just doingsmall things all the time. And you don't want to beperched overhead all the time. You want to be-- it's hard toget what is the big picture when you're-- you learn onelittle chunk and you learn another little chunk. But you want to start piecingthat into the big picture as much as you can. And so you want to be kindof going back and forth. One of the techniquesthat I didn't talk about, that's very important,is that of interleaving.
And a lot of times, whenyou're learning, for example, some new techniquein calculus, you'll do 10 problemspretty much the same, in learning thattechnique in calculus. But you don't want to do that. You want to do one or twoproblems using that technique. Flip to anothersection of the book. Do that problem. Kind of compare--wait a minute, why am I using this techniquehere and that technique here? Why are those different? Flip back. Do another one ofthe first technique. Then flip to adifferent-- we're not training people-- we don'teven have our books set up to interleave. And we need to startdoing that, because that's what actually-- it'spractice of repetition, but mixed with interleaving,that builds flexibility. So those are mythoughts on that. Good question. AUDIENCE: Like when I wasin high school and college and taking math, Iwas perfectly fine. Like I did well, anddid well on the tests. But my problem wasalways trying to apply it outside thatenvironment, like trying to use it practicallyor in everyday life, or whatever it was that Ineeded certain math skills. I just could never do it. And I was wondering if youhad any sort of technique or strategy or ideasabout how there's a way to take math from theschool and sort of be able to apply itin regular life, or just outside of school. BARBARA OAKLEY: That'sa very good question. One of the things thatpeople do, they look at math and they say, how am Iever going to use this? In fact, I rememberwhen I was called into the principal'soffice in eighth grade, because I wasn't doing my math. I was actually reading a book. And so I remonstratedwith the principal, saying that there wasno real use for it. I would never use it. And they gave up onme, at that point. But it's kind of like this. When you're atthe gym and you're lifting a specifictype of weight, are you ever going to gointo the outside world and lift that kind of weight? Of course not. But you're actuallyusing muscles that you might use relatedmuscles when you're lifting up your luggage to get in and putit in the airline compartment.
So what you're doing whenyou're learning something in math and scienceis you're developing sort of neural pathways. You may not use exactly thatone, but in surprising ways, they can shape how you'rethinking about things. So an example is this. They did a study, andthey found, you know, there's some kids who goall the way through college. And you can kind of take coursesthat have almost no math, really, involved. You know, math for poets,or i these kinds of courses. And you go all the way through. But people who havethis kind of background, where they've had very littleexposure, when you control for all aspects of what's goingon that you can reasonably control for, the ones who haveno real background in math are far more likely to defaulton their home mortgages. So you know, think about that. But it's actually, you're ableto think more intelligently. Now, what about--you're really concerned about the environment.
So someone comes upand says, well, we've got to have electric cars. Sounds really good, right? But if you're trained, you'vegot some kind of background, you could go, yeah,but wait a minute. What about theeffect of batteries on the environment, right? Do they actuallymake more pollution? In fact, does thattransfer of energy create more harmfor the environment than a regular gasoline engine? If you're taught to think alittle bit more rationally and carefully aboutthings, you can actually-- you're using thoseintellectual muscles in ways that you haven'treally-- you don't really realize how importantthat actually is. So one way, though,just reflecting, just a little bitof a different way, because yourquestion's very deep. When you're learning a language,one of the things you do is you're learning,you're practicing.
And it can be really toughto actually go and meet somebody and talk with them,who speaks that language. But that real life experience iswhat brings the language alive, and what nourishes thedesire to learn it. So I think finding ways--when you're walking around and you're thinking aboutsomething you just learned mathematically, lookaround and try and bring it into the environment you're in. And try to think aboutit in those ways. That's such a great question. Because it helps us be aware ofthe richness of life around us. And so I think trying to bringsome of these ideas you're learning into the life aroundus is a brilliant thing to do, and a great attitude to have. So I thank you so verymuch for having me here. BARBARA OAKLEY: Fantastic talk. Great answers. AUDIENCE: And happy learning. BARBARA OAKLEY: Thankyou so much, Barb. Thank you.
