Page 203 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

In a related vein, people often don’t realize that competition can be a good thing
—competition is an intense form of collaboration that can help bring out
people’s best.
Brainstorming buddies, friends, and teammates can help in another way. You
often don’t mind looking stupid in front of friends. But you don’t want to look
too stupid—at least, not too often. Studying with others, then, can be a little bit
like practicing in front of an audience. Research has shown that such public

practice makes it easier for you to think on your feet and react well in stressful
situations such as those you encounter when you take tests or give a
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presentation. There is yet another value to study buddies—this relates to when
credible sources are in error. Inevitably, no matter how good they are, your
instructor—or the book—will make a mistake. Friends can help validate and
untangle the resulting confusion and prevent hours of following false leads as

you try to find a way to explain something that’s flat-out wrong.
But a final word of warning: study groups can be powerfully effective for
learning in math, science, engineering, and technology. If study sessions turn
into socializing occasions, however, all bets are off. Keep small talk to a
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minimum, get your group on track, and finish your work. If you find that your
group meetings start five to fifteen minutes late, members haven’t read the
material, and the conversation consistently veers off topic, find yourself another

group.

TEAMWORK FOR INTROVERTS

“I’m an introvert and I don’t like working with people. But when I wasn’t doing so well in my
college engineering classes (back in the 1980s), I decided that I needed a second pair of
eyes, although I still didn’t want to work with anyone. Since we didn’t have online chatting
back then, we wrote notes on each other’s doors in the dorms. My classmate Jeff and I
had a system: I would write ‘1) 1.7 m/s’—meaning that the answer to homework problem
one was 1.7 meters per second. Then I’d get back from a shower and see that Jeff had
written, ‘No, 1) 11 m/s.’ I’d desperately go through my own work and find a mistake, but
now I had 8.45 m/s. I’d go down to Jeff’s room and we’d argue intensively with both our
solutions out while he had a guitar slung around his shoulder. Then we’d both go back to
our own work on our own time and I’d suddenly see that the answer was 9.37 m/s, and so
would he, and we’d both get 100 percent on the homework assignment. As you can see,
there are ways to work with others that require only minimal interaction if you don’t like
working in groups.”