I purchased this book quite a while ago because I read an article
by Barbara Oakley in the Nautilus magazine and it intrigued me. The story of
her career path was highly unusual and quite inspiring. She was a math phobic in
her formative years, failing her algebra class in school. She naturally opted
out of the STEM related path and became
a translator in the military, shying away from math and the technology path. As she worked in the military, she realized
that it is impossible to get ahead without some inkling of the math and
sciences, so she decided that she needed to overcome her fear of math. Indeed,
she got so good at the math and sciences that she eventually received a bachelors, a masters,
and then a PhD in electrical engineering. She is now a professor in systems engineering.
This book is her way of passing on the method of her
madness, her way to overcome her fears
and retrained her mind to be accepting of the mathematical learning and thinking.
The critical point that she is making is
that it is possible to change the way your mental processes deal with problems.
It is possible because your brain is malleable, but you need to put in the work
to overcome bad habits, mainly procrastination and avoidance. A perfect
illustration of the growth mindset.
She directly addresses those students who are working in the
math and science area, as her purpose is
to demonstrate to a very skeptical audience how to be better at doing math and
science. The useful part of her pedagogy is that even though the book is
focused on math and sciences, the lessons can be transferred to other things: sports,
music, literature, etc. Even though Oakley lays it out in 18 simple-to-read
chapters, the lessons are not easy, if
it was easy, she wouldn’t be writing the book. She has set herself up for an
informative and enlightening argument with the traditional way of teaching math
and science.
A keyword that comes up time and time again is einstellung,
it is defined as the process where an idea that you already have in mind, or
your simple initial thoughts, is preventing a better idea or solution from
being found. This is what she identifies as the culprit for our habit of depending
on rote thinking and for our penchant to convince ourselves that a problem is the
same problem that we have seen before, even though it is not. She identifies the necessary mindscape for
solving problems, defining the oppositional modes of thinking that she terms focused and diffused thinking. The two
terms are like the System One versus System Two thinking that the Tversky and
Kahneman made famous. It is also like the terms procedural versus conceptual thinking. They
are all similar but not the same, but similar enough so that one can draw
analogies between them.
When thinking of those in the math and Sciences, the public often
talk about the amount of focus and concentration that is needed to solve those problems.
This is the stereotypical way we think of our mathematicians and scientists:
these wild haired geniuses, with furrowed brows, and unkempt lab coats covered
with chalk dust, thinking with superhuman concentration, even though that is
the worst way to be creative and innovative. What cause people to get locked
and blocked in their thoughts is this excessive focus on focus, which brings
our tendency for einstellung to the fore. The real breakthroughs in math
and science often happens when the mathematician or scientists or engineer uses
what Oakley terms diffused thinking; that is they don't hang on tightly to what
they know already, they try to diffuse their focus so that the brain has freed
up their active memory so that they could see other ,; open their minds up to
different ways of approaching a problem; or even make giant leaps of faith which
would help them solve the problem. It is not just a matter of serendipity; it
is a matter of necessity that scientists’, mathematicians, and engineers are
deliberately diffused when they do their best work.
Another thing that Oakley talks about is chunking, this is a term that have become ubiquitous
amongst the other cognitive scientific literature. Indeed, much of Oakley's
book seem familiar because she has called upon much of the latest research on
learning. Chunking is a way of combining steps in any progression that leads up
to a unified piece of knowledge which allows the brain to unite the discrete
steps of a progression so that the separate steps coalesce into a coherent chunk
of knowledge. This condenses the knowledge and it allows making connections between different ideas and
understanding the underlying principles and fundamentals of many things easier.
Connection making is something that humans are exceptionally
good at; in fact, I believe this is what
separates us from other animals, this ability be able to chunk knowledge
together to create connections. Chunking also serves a great purpose in helping
us manage the limited capacity of our active memory. If it is chunked, it is in
our long-term memory; if it is in the long-term memory it is there for us to
reference. We do not need to recall the fundamentals every time we are solving
a problem because having the chunk in the long-term memory means that it is
there being ready and useful for us.
The idea is that the active memory can only hold a certain
number of chunks of knowledge. If your active
memory is full, you are not able to absorb other new knowledge or new
information. The book spends many pages
on how to chunk information and how to store that chunk into the long-term memory
for safekeeping. Which frees up our active memory to help us make connections
between different ideas.
Oakley also spends a lot time dealing with procrastination. Procrastination
is what we do when we are scared or if we are intimidated by the task. She delves
into different tips and strategies on how to deal with procrastination. One of
the best things about this book is that she is able to create checklists for dealing
with procrastination and she gives tips and hints on how to become better
learners.
The reader gets the idea that this book goes beyond just being
a favorite topic for the author, this is her passion: to share what she has
learned from her own experience learning to be a converted math and science geek
while practicing her profession as a teacher.
This is a very worthy book to read. It is not a hard read, it is quite
an easy read, some of that comes from the fact that much of the material seemed
to be familiar to me so it was preaching to the choir. As I say that however, I
would recommend this for any of my future STEM students. It is especially
useful for anybody who is interested in learning or in the area of cognitive sciences of learning because she integrates
all the different concepts from different books and publications. The material
is presented so easily and rationally so that it all makes sense.
Many of the other books I have read in this area emphasizes
the why’s of learning, i.e. the methodology; this book shows us the how’s that
we need in order to execute so that we can be better learners. I highly
recommend this for anyone, whether you are math phobic or not, or if you are just
concerned about being the best learner you can be, this book will help you get well
on your way.
