“Pie.
I wish I could determine pi,
‘Eureka’ cried the great inventor”
Time someone learning the number pi fluently to 11 decimal places.
How long would they take? 10 minutes? Longer? To get it accurate? That’s 14 digits. Takes some effort.
Time yourself repeating the title (Pie.) and first two lines of the poem above, whilst picturing it visually, until you know the two lines fluently.
Now, from memory, count the number of letters in each word from the title and two lines, write it down, and you’ve written pi to 11 decimal places.
There are easier and faster ways to do things.
Learning is about attaching what you don’t know to what you do know.
To learn faster, then, put to better use what you do already know.
“What do I know that I could attach this to?” helps.
So does, “what’s this new idea like?” and “what does this most remind me of?”
It’s why analogies and metaphors grease the wheels and do so much heavy lifting.
See what I mean?
