Page 68 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

toward getting them filled in.
Once you’ve got something down, you can expand the time between
“upkeep” repetitions to weeks or months—and eventually it can become close to
permanent. (Returning to Russia on a visit, for example, I found myself annoyed
by an unscrupulous taxi driver. To my amazement, words I hadn’t thought or
used for twenty-five years popped from my mouth—I hadn’t even been
consciously aware I knew those words!)

MAKE YOUR KNOWLEDGE SECOND

NATURE

“Getting a concept in class versus being able to apply it to a genuine physical problem is
the difference between a simple student and a full-blown scientist or engineer. The only
way I know of to make that jump is to work with the concept until it becomes second
nature, so you can begin to use it like a tool.”
—Thomas Day, Professor of Audio Engineering, McNally Smith College of Music

Later, we’ll discuss useful apps and programs that can help with learning. But
for now, it’s worth knowing that well-designed electronic flash card systems,

such as Anki, have built into them the appropriate spaced repetition time to
optimize the rate of learning new material.
One way to think about this type of learning and recall is shown in the
following working-memory illustration. As we mentioned earlier, there are four
or so spots in working memory.