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19 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- A look-alike word is a hypothesis, not a translation.
Spanish and English share thousands of cognates: nación/nation, animal/animal, importante/important. That speeds up …
- After a day, most of it is gone, but not all.
In 1885 Ebbinghaus memorised nonsense syllables and tested how much he still knew. After 20 minutes about 40 percent …
- Divers forgot underwater what they had learned on the beach.
In 1975 Godden and Baddeley had divers learn 36 words either on the beach or underwater, then recall them. Recall in …
- Explain how a zipper works. In detail.
In 2002 Rozenblit and Keil asked students to rate how well they understood everyday devices, then to explain step by …
- Highlighting and rereading: the most popular study methods work least.
In 2013 Dunlosky and colleagues rated ten learning techniques against hundreds of studies. Highlighting, underlining …
- How a monk turned a hymn into "do re mi".
In the 11th century Guido of Arezzo used the hymn "Ut queant laxis": each of its first six half-lines starts one scale …
- How flashcard apps decide when you see a card again.
Every card gets an interval. Answer correctly and it grows, roughly from 1 to 3, 7, 16, 35 days. Fail and it resets to …
- How mixed practice feels slower but scores higher on the test.
In 2007 Rohrer and Taylor had students practise volume formulas: one group in blocks, one solid shape at a time, the …
- How one question turns rote learning into understanding.
For each new fact ask "why is this true?" and answer it yourself. In 2013 Dunlosky and colleagues rated this technique …
- How one student took his digit span from 7 to 80.
Chunking means grouping single items into meaningful units. Working with Anders Ericsson for over two years, the runner …
- How to guess German articles right most of the time.
Look at the ending. Always feminine: -ung, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -tät (die Zeitung, die Qualität), almost always -ion …
- How to store a list in your flat and find it again.
Pick a route you could walk blindfolded: door, hallway, kitchen, sofa. Turn each list item into an image as absurd as …
- How to unmask false friends before they embarrass you.
Three checks for a word that looks familiar: First, is it used in a context where the familiar meaning makes no sense? …
- How you really learn at work: almost never in a seminar.
The 70-20-10 model comes from a survey of nearly 200 executives at the Center for Creative Leadership: they credited …
- Playing Mozart doesn't make your child smarter. Nobody claimed it did.
In 1993 Rauscher and colleagues found a brief gain on one spatial subtask that faded after about 15 minutes; IQ was …
- Same study time, twice the retention.
Spread 60 minutes of studying over several days instead of one evening and you'll remember far more. Hermann Ebbinghaus …
- Testing yourself beats rereading, even though it feels worse.
In 2006 Roediger and Karpicke had students either read a passage four times, or read it once and write it from memory …
- The famous seven items in your head are more like four.
George Miller named the "magical number seven plus or minus two" in 1956 as working memory's capacity. Nelson Cowan …
- Visual learner? Research finds no evidence.
In surveys, over 90 percent of teachers believe people learn better when material matches their learning style. In 2008 …