Here is the full transcript of Barbara Oakley's talk on

Learning to Learn @ Talks at the Google conference.

Introductory Speaker: Today we have a very, very special

guest with us. I remember reading Charlie Munger saying
that he didn't know an intelligent man who didn't read all
the time. And he has categorized Warren Buffett as a
learning machine.

The inspiration there is how does one become a very

effective learner? What is the science of learning? And
reading Barb's book, that's exactly what the book seems
to be teaching us. And I loved reading your book. Not
only did I love reading her book, I was able to identify
that the voice in that book is the voice of a teacher, and
that really resonated with me personally. So I'm very glad
that Barb is here with us today.
So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please join
me in welcoming Barb Oakley.
Barbara Oakley: It's a pleasure to be here. And I would
like to start by telling you a little story, another. And this
story is about… well, I think we all love seeing other
people, right? To a greater or lesser extent. And I love
seeing people.
And then I have to tell you about this guy who was one of
the most interesting people. I have ever seen. And this
was when I was working in Antarctica at McMurdo
Station, and this guy's name was Neil. And Neil was a
thin, thin guy with a sort of high-pitched voice. And it had
a big head, so it looked like some kind of upside-down
exclamation point. And what Neil liked to do was pick up
the phone and answer it with a perfect imitation of the
6’8″ gorilla of a station manager, Art Brown.
So one day the phone rings. Neil picks it up, as
always…”Hello. This is Art Brown." And it was Art Brown
on the other end of the line.
Then Art says, who the hell is this? Or more unprintable
words for that matter. It happened to me at the
beginning that I fell off the mathematics train. I just said,
I can't do this. I hate it. I really don't want anything to do
with it. Science is the same way. And then I basically
flunked my way through elementary, middle school, and
high school math and science. And it's really fun to think
about it now, because I'm an engineering professor.
And I publish well in some of the top magazines, so I'm
doing very well as an engineer. But one day, one of my
students found out about my sordid past as a math
lackey, and he asked me, he said, how did you do it? How
did you change your brain? And I thought, you know, how
did I do it? I mean, looking back, I was just a little kid,
and I loved animals, and I liked furry, fluffy things, and I
liked knitting, and I loved language and the study of
language.
And at that time, there were no college loans that were
relatively easy to obtain. That's why I really wanted to
learn a language. And I couldn't afford to go to school, so
how could I study languages in that kind of situation? And
there was a way I could do it.
In fact, you could go learn a language and get paid for it
while you did it. And that was to join the Army. And that
is what I did. I joined the army. And there you see me,
looking incredibly nervous, about to throw a hand
grenade.
And I learned a language. I learned Russian. And I ended
up working on Russian trawlers, Soviet trawlers, in the
Bering Sea. And that's me standing on a bunch of fish
there. I can still swear pretty well in Russian, although
the rest of the Russian is a bit rusty.
But I loved having adventures and gaining new
perspectives. And that's how I also ended up at the South
Pole station in Antarctica. And that's where I met my
husband. That's why I always say that I had to go to the
ends of the Earth to meet that man, and I did. The thing
is, though, I started to realize that, you know, I was
always interested in these new perspectives, but they
were always kind of perspectives that I was comfortable
with in some way.
You know, having adventures is a comfortable thing. But I
wasn't really trying to get a totally new perspective, I
thought about the engineers I had worked with, the West
Point engineers, who were in the military. And I realized
that his problem-solving skills were, in many ways,
exceptional. They could think in a way that I couldn't
think. And I thought, you know, what if I could read these
kinds of equations like they can read equations? What if
you could, in a sense, learn the language they could
speak?
Could I really change my brain to learn that way? To find
out what these people knew? And so, when I started
trying to answer that student's question, how did his
brain change? I started working on a book to describe
some of these key ideas. And while I was working on this
book, I did things like go to ratemyprofessorscom. Some
of you who have been to schools probably realize that it is
a pretty good website. And I looked to see who the best
teachers in the world were, teaching subjects like
engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics,
economics, a lot of really difficult subjects.
And also many very relevant topics, such as psychology,
even English. How did they teach so that people could
learn and how did they learn themselves? And I also
reached out to the best cognitive psychologists and
neuroscientists. And my background informed this as
well. Having taught for several decades as an engineering
professor, I have done active research in active learning.
And so, all these things came together.
And what I found that was very interesting was when I
approached all of these professors, many of them who are
in the STEM disciplines in particular (science, technology,
engineering and mathematics), they used these
approaches that might involve things like metaphors or
analogy. . But they were too embarrassed to say that,
because other teachers would say, oh, you're screwing
things up. But it was actually something that all these top
professors used to more easily communicate ideas. It was
like this shared handshake. They all knew how to do it,
but they didn't realize that these other top teachers were
using the same approaches.
So what I'm going to tell you now is that I'm going to
give you an idea. These, these, are the key ideas related
to learning that all these people have discovered. So first
of all, we know that the brain is really complicated. So
what we're going to do is simplify it. And it can simplify
the brain's functioning in two fundamentally different
ways.
The first is what I will call focused mode, and the second
is what I will call diffuse mode. And this is actually, it
relates to the default mode network and other related,
there are about 24 or 25 so far, neural resting states that
have been detected. So all these states together, I'll just
call the fuzzy mode. And what can happen, I mean, our
best way to really understand these two different modes
is to use a metaphor. And the metaphor we are going to
use is that of a pinball machine.
And a pinball machine, everyone knows how it works. You
just take the pinball and pull the plunger, and a ball was
bouncing off the rubber bumpers, and that 's how you get
points. And what we're going to do is take that pinball
machine and we're going to overlay it on the brain. And
you see the brain right here. Here are the ears and there
is the nose.
And what we're going to do, we're going to take that
pinball machine and we're going to put it directly into the
brain. And there you have it. There's the pinball machine
in the brain. And you can see how you can pull back the
plunger there, and you've got all these little pinballs
there, or the rubber bumpers, and they're all very close
together. So what happens is in focused mode type
thinking, like what I'm showing here, you have these
bumpers close together and often you have patterns that
are already here.
For example, if you've already learned how to multiply
and you're trying to solve a multiplication problem, you'll
sit in focused mode and you'll have these patterns that
are already there. And you think a thought, and it takes
off, and it moves sharply around the rubber bumpers
along the paths that it has been on before, that it has
developed as a consequence of previous learning.
But what if the pattern you're trying to think of is
something new? What if you already know about
multiplication, but have never encountered division
before? So you are trying to understand this idea. Or the
concept of limits in calculus. How do you deal with a
completely new idea that you've never encountered
before? Well, that's where this other way the brain works,
in diffuse thinking mode, can actually be a benefit.
Now, take a look. Here is the representative of the diffuse
mode. And it's just an analogy, but it's a very good one
that helps us understand. Look how far apart those
rubber bumpers are. When you think a thought in diffuse
mode, thoughts can vary much more.
Now you can't think strictly to really work out the details
of a problem, but at least you can come up with a new
kind of way of thinking about things that you couldn't
have gotten if you were just in focused mode. In fact,
sometimes when you're trying to solve a really difficult
problem, the worst thing you can do is sit there and focus
and focus on it. Because you can be in that part of the
brain, so to speak, and yet you need to be in a completely
different place.
So the best thing you can do when you're really stuck and
frustrated with a problem is to not keep focusing on it. In
fact, it is necessary to have a very different way of
thinking. And that is what is represented here. So what
this practically means for you is that you're sitting there,
you're working...hey, get out. Go for a run. Go down and
take a shower, if necessary. Or do something that really
distracts you completely.
Because when you are in this mode, as long as your
attention is focused on that problem, you are still in this
mode and you cannot come to this way of solving things.
So how can this work for people? If you look at this guy
here, he was Salvador Dalí, one of the most brilliant
surrealist painters of the 20th century. Shown here with
his pet ocelot, Babou. And what Dalí used to do is this. He
sat in a chair when he had a difficult problem to solve
with his paintings.
He would sit and relax, and relax. And just as he had
relaxed so much, you know, like letting his mind run
freely, he had a key in his hand. And just as he would
relax so much that he would fall asleep, the key would fall
out of his hand, the noise would wake him up, and he
would walk away with this new idea from the diffuse
mode, taking it back to the focused mode, where he could
refine them and actually use them. So you might think,
well, you know, that's great for artists.
But what if you are an engineer? If you look at this guy
here, he was Thomas Edison. And what Edison used to
do, at least according to legend, was sit in a chair with
ball bearings in his hand. And he would relax and relax,
and finally, when he fell asleep, the ball bearings would
fall out of his hand. And whatever he, in his very relaxed
way, had been thinking about, he could take some of
those ideas in that mode and bring them back into
focused mode, where he could refine them, analyze them,
and come up with some of those brilliant inventions. So
the lesson for us, from all this, is that I am giving you
some exemplary innovators in various fields.
But whenever you're solving a problem, even if it's a
problem that thousands or even millions of people have
solved before, for you, it's the first time you've solved it.
And you should use some of these same creative
approaches that these other brilliant thinkers have used.
And what you want to do, keep in mind, is that you can
be in focused mode or you can be in diffuse mode, but
you really can't, as far as we know, unless you are an
exceptionally well-trained monk. - be in both modes at
the same time. So focused or diffuse. And you want to
develop both modes.
Diffuse thinking is often not conscious, but it is also
learning. And that is why this relaxation process can also
be very important. Now I just wanted to give you a quick
image here. This shows some of the brilliant network
connectivity in default mode. Do you see all these
connections here between various aspects of the brain?
This is a website for a work mode, but the focused mode
has a very different website.
So if you're just focusing, you're not accessing or getting
access to a lot of the different connections that are
available to you. That's why going back and forth
between modes can be so important. Now, it takes time
to do this. That's why you can't sit down and solve a
difficult problem right away. You often have to go back
and forth between modes.
And in a sense, you can almost think of him as a
weightlifter. And a weightlifter, you don't cram the night
before a big competition and build muscle like that. It
takes time to develop those muscles. Likewise, it takes
time to develop the neural scaffolding that is involved in
learning and new thought processes. But I know what
you're really thinking.
You may be thinking, I'm a procrastinator, I hope.
Sometimes I don't have time to do things, right? So let's
talk a little about procrastination. And sometimes you can
be a really effective human being but still procrastinate
on some things. And in that sense, there are things to
learn to help improve your productivity and your
effectiveness in what you do.
So, procrastination arises in a very interesting way.
Studies have shown that if you watch something you
don't like, the pain centers in your brain activate. So if
you look at a book for a topic you don't like, you can
actually feel a twinge and we can see it in the brain, if
you're being imagined. So what do you do when you feel
pain? I mean, it's the same pain as when you hit your
thumb with a hammer. Well, you have two different ways
to handle it.

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The first way is that you can work with it, like 20 minutes
or so, and the pain will gradually disappear. But if you're
like most people, what you'll do is divert your attention to
something more pleasant, and guess what? You'll feel
better right away, right? And so, in a sense,
procrastination can actually be a bit like an addiction. You
do it once, you do it twice, it's no big deal. However, you
do it a lot and it can actually be very, very detrimental to
your life. So I'm an engineer.
I believe in useful and totally practical things. So what
I'm going to do is cut right to the chase and say that this
is the most effective way to help you deal with
procrastination. And it's simply using the Pomodoro
Technique . And this is a technique that was developed
by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. And it involved - he
called it the Pomodoro Technique because it had a timer
in the shape of a tomato, and pomodoro is Italian for
tomato.
And what he would do is he would recommend that you
set a timer for 25 minutes. In fact, you can have different
schedules. Different time periods are useful for different
people. But you set it, generally, for 25 minutes, and then
turn everything else off. So no alarms, no instant
messages, anything that might disturb your
concentration, turn it off.
And then you work with as careful focused attention as
possible for those 25 minutes. Now sometimes I'll be
working and think, am I really concentrating as hard as I
can? And then I think, well, obviously not, because I got
distracted and I wonder if I'm focusing instead of actually
working. But I let that thought pass and then I get back
to my work, right? And that's what you're doing with this
technique. You just want to focus on your work. And what
happens is because you're just focusing on the task and
the time, and not the pain of "I must complete this task,"
it somehow makes it so much easier to do.
I mean, anyone, pretty much anyone, can sit down for 25
minutes and work. And then when you're done, you
reward yourself. And that reward is really very important.
Because what you are doing is focusing during focused
mode, but then you want to train to relax, enjoy and do
something different. Just surf the web, go out for…
whatever floats your boat, go out and do it.
And this, in fact, is important. Because we know that
some aspects of learning take place during this relaxed
process. So your tendency is to think, I'm not working
when I'm not focusing. But actually you are. So it gives
you a little sense of relief and accomplishment which is
nice to relax.
So a couple of little tips. First, don't sit down and do a
Pomodoro and say, you know, I'm going to finish my
work. Don't focus on the task. Focus only on time. And
that's the trick of this technique.
Because it helps you get over that pain in your brain and
allows you to just relax comfortably and get into the flow
of the task. The other thing is don't say, OK, I'm going to
do 20 Pomodoros today, and think you're going to gain
more productivity that way. You want to gradually start
getting used to this technique and you will find that it
works very, very well.
Now, another thing that's really important, related to
learning, is that we've also been told, hey, sleep is really
important before a big test or something. In reality, sleep
is important in many different ways. And I'm going to talk
to you, just touch on a little bit one of the main important
reasons why sleep is important for learning. We've
discovered that if you look at the cells, these little circles
here represent cells, neurons, in the brain. And what
happens when you go to sleep is this. Well, when you're
awake, first, when you're awake, these metabolites will
come out and get between the junctions. And they stay
out there, and they're essentially toxins in your brain.
So when you're awake, these toxins gradually build up in
your brain. And they affect your judgment. So, when you
stay awake longer and longer, it becomes harder and
harder to think clearly. So when you go to sleep, this is
what happens. Now watch very carefully what happens to
those cells.
You go to sleep, they shrink. I'll do it again, because I
have a lot of fun doing this. See? They shrink when you
go to sleep. And because they shrink, what it does is it
allows fluids to pass through the cells and remove these
metabolites. So a very important part of sleep is just the
cleansing, the cleansing that takes place, that allows your
brain to function much more effectively.
Now, another very important aspect of sleep is related to
neuronal synaptic growth. In this wonderful article by
Guang Yang - she's out of Langone - if you look at the
image above, you can see here what's going on. This is
the same neuron at the top and bottom. The upper
neuron is before learning and before sleeping. The lower
neuron is after learning and after sleeping.
All these little triangles or new synaptic connections. So
when you learn something and go to sleep, that's when
the new synaptic connections are formed. And this is
what happens when you are learning. That's why it's very
important, when you're learning something new, again,
you don't want to cram in at the last minute. You want to
have a lot of short periods of learning, sleep, learn, sleep,
and that helps you build that neural scaffolding that helps
you learn much better.
So there's another aspect to learning, and people often
think that this is so completely disconnected from real
learning that it's even taking away from kids' recess.
Because they say, oh, that doesn't help them learn. It is
only when they are sitting in front of us, learning from us,
that they really learn. But that's not true at all. We are
now discovering how incredibly important exercise is to
the learning process.
Now, if you look here, this study was of a mouse, and
they were training this mouse to differentiate between
two different symbols. And if you look at the bottom,
what's happening is that all these blue spots are old
neurons. Now we used to think that you are born with all
the neurons you have, and that's what you have for the
rest of your life. Well, of course, we now know that's not
true. But it was wisdom, received wisdom, for many
decades.
So what they found was: Do you see these red lines here?
Those are actually the new neurons that are born every
day in all of us, as well as in this mouse, in the
hippocampus. And here's how: they are absolutely
essential to our ability to learn and remember new
information. There are two ways to allow these new
neurons to grow and survive. One is that you expose
yourself to new environments. That's why traveling can
be so good. That's where your learning can be effective.
And these kinds of things can help those new neurons
survive.
But the other way to help these neurons survive that is
just as powerful as learning is to simply exercise.
Therefore, exercise is extremely important. And I'm not
talking, hey, I have to be an Olympic weightlifter or be a
marathon runner. Even a simple walk can be very, very
effective. And I'm sure you've all had the experience.
Your brain is dull, and then you go for a walk, and it
clears up your thinking. But even a few days of an
exercise program are doing much more than that. You are
actually improving your neurons' ability to grow and
survive.
Now, if you look, there's a name here, Terrence
Sejnowski. I was in one of the original articles doing this
original research. He is Professor Francis Crick at the Salk
Institute, and she is also my colleague in the Massive
Open Online course that is based on the book. And Terry
is... he's an extraordinary guy. And it was really, really
fun to do the Massive Open Online Course with him.
And so we went and did some filming together. So I
asked him, I said, well, Terry, you know, you're talking
about all this stuff about the importance of exercise. Do
exercise? What do you do for a living? And he says, do I
exercise? And what he does is he goes and every day, or
every few days, he comes down, he's like a mountain
goat. The guy is 65 years old and coming down. You
know, I'm running after him.
And he runs to the beach, as you see here. And that's
how he exercises. I love how it ends here. Look at this ...
Check it out.
So he's a legend in neuroscience. And I'm convinced that
part of it is because he uses some of these ideas that he's
found in his research to help him maintain his intellectual
edge. Now, let's talk a little about something called
working memory . Working memory is how you keep a
brief thought in mind. It was previously thought that you
had seven spaces in your working memory, and that is
why you could have a seven-digit phone number.
But now we're realizing that it's more like there are four
slots in working memory. So maybe for me, it's like two
slots in working memory. But anyway, you have four
slots, and it's in your prefrontal, you can think of it as
your working memory, you're holding things in your
prefrontal cortex. So I have it symbolized right there as
your four working memory slots. So when you're
remembering something, you're thinking about something
with working memory, you can think of it symbolically, at
least, as something like an octopus, the octopus of
attention, reaching through those spaces of working
memory. and makes connections between different ideas.
.
And that's why you can't have too many ideas in your
brain at once before you get confused. But what happens
if you multitask? What if you have a little eye here on
some, you know, I'm getting an instant message. In a
sense, that's like removing one of those tentacles from
your working memory. And you don't have many
tentacles. So it's really gaining whatever intellectual
weight you have, you're losing some of it. You're getting
a little stupider when you multitask.
That's why it's so incredibly important to pay careful,
focused attention, especially when you're working on
something that's quite difficult.
Now, I just like to contrast this with the diffuse mode.
Fuzzy mode, there are many connections, but they are
much more random in the way they are carried out. So
how do you get something from working memory to long-
term memory, which is more distributed in your brain?
Well, the best way is through practice. Practice makes, in
a sense, permanent.
The more you practice, the broader that little neural
pathway becomes and the more deeply rooted it
becomes. So if you're learning something and you
practice, those patterns become deeper and deeper. And
that's how you can learn something and pull it from long-
term memory into working memory. If you don't practice,
what will happen is you have these neurons, and it's
almost like you have these little metabolic vampires that
just come and suck up those patterns before they can
deepen. And that's why sometimes you can learn
something from a teacher, you even understand it.
You have had that great stroke of perception. You walk
away. You don't look at it for a few days, and those little
metabolic vampires just absorb that pattern. And he
really can't remember or understand what he had
previously learned. So the best way to get patterns firmly
ingrained in your long-term memory is to practice using
spaced repetition.
So you could practice Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
maybe again on Friday. And by spacing things out, you
realize, now, that these new synaptic connections grow
every time you learn a little bit and then fall asleep. What
you don't want to do is this kind of thing, where you're
crammed like crazy. And then look, that metabolic
vampire just sucks, and you're left with very little. It's
hard to remember what I was learning.
A good way to think about this is simply the analogy of a
wall. If you are building a brick wall and you give it time
between layers of mortar, it can set and you can build a
solid, strong wall. But if you don't, it's kind of confusing.
And it doesn't turn into a really good build that you can
actually use it on. Let's go back again and talk a little bit
more, quickly, about attention and its relationship to
working memory.
Now, if you look here, you can see that you have a space
in your working memory that is full. When you have a full
slot, you can put other things into your working memory.
But here's the trick. How do you fit things into a single
slot? It turns out that if you create a fragment, a
fragment of the material, it is easy to get it into working
memory. So this is what I mean by that.
If you look here, there's a raw pattern of information
here, right? It's a riddle. Is hard to understand. It seems
like a crazy fight. And see what's happening in your
working memory. It's like going a little crazy, trying to
figure things out.
In fact, recent research at Stanford has shown that
children who are trying to learn math facts, their little
prefrontal cortexes go crazy trying to assimilate and
master the material. But once they learn those math
operations, this relaxes. What is really happening is this.
They have the essential idea, and that essential idea is a
single smooth ribbon that they can easily place in working
memory when they need to, to understand and make
connections to other problems they are trying to solve. .
Now, if you just memorize and you don't understand what
you're memorizing, it's like creating that little circle there.

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And you can see it. You have it. It really is a piece. But
you can't fit it very well with other bits. So there's
another important idea about fragmentation, and that's
this.
Once you've compressed an idea, one of the most brilliant
mathematicians mentioned that one of the great things
about mathematics is just that idea that you can
compress it. You fight, fight, fight and suddenly it clicks
and you have it compressed. Once you have it
compressed into a chunk, you can actually… make that
chunk bigger, right? How to learn a little song? In fact,
you can learn another piece and put them together, and
you have a bigger part. Or you can also learn similar
parts from other disciplines, and it's very, very useful.
That is an idea of transfer.
But what you're really doing when you're learning and
mastering a topic is, in a sense, creating a library of
snippets. And you can tap into that library and make
connections between things. And that's how great
creativity arises, it's making connections with those
pieces. So the real experts often have huge libraries of
snippets that they have developed.
Now, when you're learning, there's kind of a... you can
think of it as there's a top-down approach. So if you're
learning a new topic, you can almost think of it as if
there's a chunk there, that's that tire, and here's a chunk,
that's the man's face, and another tire. So you're learning
all these bits, and when you learn them all, it forms the
big picture of the material. Even if it's missing a few
pieces here and there, it still has that big picture. But if
you don't practice, repeat and really master your parts,
that's how it is. It's like you're trying to piece together
the big picture with fragments that are weak.
And it's much harder to put together the big picture with
that in mind. So again, like I was saying, you have a
thought tape. That's a chunk. Here is another snippet in
another field, but it has a similar shape. And that is the
idea of transfer.
So if you're a physicist, you might be able to learn
economics more easily, because some of the chunks are
actually similar in shape. If you are a language learner
learning math and science, there are meta-fragments
available. For example, that idea of practice and
repetition for language also applies to learning math and
science. So let's go to another aspect that I think relates
to learning. Some of you may say that you may have
wonderful memories here.
But some of you may wish you had better memories.
Well, let me give you some awareness. What you think
may be a negative attribute may actually be a very, very
positive attribute. It turns out that when you have bad
working memory, what that really means is that you can't
keep things in mind very well, right? So you're looking at
your colleague who can remember all these different
things. They can store it in their working memory, do
somersaults with it, and come up with new ideas very
quickly.
And you're lucky you remember what they were talking
about. But this is the thing. Research has shown that if
you have low working memory and your four-space is
pretty weak, other things always slip through the cracks.
That's why you can't hold ideas very well in your mind.
But because the other things are sliding, you're actually
more creative.
And research has shown that if you have attention deficit
disorder or your attention wanders, oh, brilliant! So what
that means is that you have a lot more potential to be
creative. Do you have to work harder than other people
to make up for that? If you do. But that comes with the
trade-off that you are very creative. Therefore, you can
be very, very valuable in your job, even if sometimes you
have to work harder to achieve that achievement. Now,
you may say, well, that's all well and good, but I'm
actually a slow thinker.
I look at these other people, and they have the brains of
a super race car. They can grasp these ideas very quickly,
and I move more slowly. Well, one of my heroes in the
history of science is Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y
Cajal, known as the father of modern neuroscience.
Ramón y Cajal was not a genius, and he said so himself.
Part of what he did was work hard and persevere.
But he said, these race car brains, which he was not,
often race and come to conclusions that he did not
overlook. He would see them and was more flexible in his
thinking. When he saw a mistake, he would walk away,
wait a minute. Whereas the racing driver is so
accustomed to being right and fast that he is much less
capable of being persistent and changing flexibly in the
light of conflicting data. So if you have a slow brain, think
about it like this.
There's the person with the racing car brain. Brilliant. But
you are the hiker and your experience is completely
different. You walk along. You can see the little rabbit
trails that have been lost.
You can reach out and touch the pine needles. You can
smell the pine forest. The racing driver misses all this.
Therefore, your thinking can also be exceptionally
valuable. In fact, Maryam Mirzakhani won the Fields
Medal, which is the highest award in mathematics, the
mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
And they told him when he was young, you think too
slowly to be a mathematician. Well guess what? It is one
of the most creative mathematics in the world. So if you
think slowly, more power to you. You're doing it right.
Now, I also want to mention another aspect, and that is
the aspect of imposter syndrome.
This is so important and so common. And what it is, is the
feeling that you're the fake one in the room, right? Am I
working here? Maybe I'm working at Google and I'm
really not as good as they say I am, and I'm kind of an
imposter here. And people feel this all over the world, no
matter what they are doing. You are a teacher? Oh, wait
a minute. You know, they're going to find out what the
real truth is.
I did a test and did well. But next time, I will fail, because
I know they will find out what the truth is. It's a very,
very common feeling. And the best way to address
imposter syndrome is to simply be aware of how common
it is. So the next time you have a thought like, I'm really
not as good as they say I am, remember, that's imposter
syndrome talking.
And probably one of the most important things I could
mention, and that's why I'm doing it towards the end, is
this idea of illusions of competence in learning. Now, let's
say that suddenly, for some reason, a bear burst out of
this screen and rampaged through the room. Would you
feel a surge of adrenaline and nervous energy? I mean,
suddenly your body was reacting physiologically to this
feeling of intense fear when you realized that the bear
was in front of you. But the thing is, when you think
about learning situations, we often say that students
come up and say, you know, I have test anxiety. That's
why I didn't do well on this test.
But for many students, unfortunately, sitting and
watching a test feels like there's a bear there. They just
realized, at that moment, that they didn't really know the
material, even though they thought they did. Therefore,
students and people can fool themselves into thinking
they are learning something when in fact they are not
learning something. So I'm going to give you some of the
best ways to really learn something. First of all, tests are
the best.
Challenge yourself in everything, all the time. The same
hour you spend on tests instead of the hour you spend
studying, you will learn much more by taking a test. And
use flash cards. Flashcards aren't just for language
learners. Why let them have the fun? Flashcards are for
ordinary use, for example, for learning mathematics and
science.
If you talk to great poets, what the great ports will tell
you is memorize the poem, because you will feel the
passion and power of the poem much more deeply, Why
shouldn't mathematicians be able to share in this fun?
What about engineers? When we have equations, if you
memorize the equation and really look at what it means
as you do it, it can actually highlight the richness of what
you're learning. And the thing is when you have
homework. Homework: A lot of times people make the
mistake of thinking, hey, you know, I did my homework
problem. And it's like saying, I'm learning to play the
piano and I played this piano piece once, so I got it.
Well, no one does that when learning to play a musical
instrument. And in the same way, when you're studying,
you don't want to do a homework problem just once. You
don't have time to do them all and repeat them, but pick
a few key ones and see if you can do it again. How to
practice it, and maybe do it in your mind. Can you follow
all the steps? If you can play it almost like a song in your
mind, you really have it.
You have it written down as a chunk and that can help
you develop your knowledge of the material. Now,
probably the most valuable technique when you're trying
to really understand something difficult is to simply
remember. When you're reading material on a page, you
read it and your tendency is... well, I'm going to underline
it, right? Because when your hand moves on the page,
you think you're somehow moving it toward your brain.
But it really is not. So resist the urge.
You can underline a little. But it's better to write it down,
because you're helping to neurally encode these ideas.
And then when you read the page, just look away and see
what you can remember. It turns out that that is very
powerful for developing your understanding of the
material in a way that other techniques, including mind
mapping and rereading, are not as good as remembering.
So another very important aspect is just studying
judiciously with other people or talking about what you're
trying to understand with other people.
Now, this must be done with caution. Obviously, not all
learning is carried out cooperatively. Sometimes you have
to walk away. But when you learn something in focused
mode, there is an integral part of that focused mode, and
that is a feeling that what you just learned is correct,
right? This kind of feeling of righteousness. And the only
way you can really disabuse yourself, sometimes, is to go
and share your ideas with other people.
And they can almost serve as a broader type of fuzzy
mode, to help disabuse you when you make mistakes.
Therefore, studying judiciously with friends and chatting
with colleagues can be incredibly helpful. Also, explain in
a way that a 10 year old can understand. We often
explain electricity, the flow of electricity, as water, the
flow of water. It's an analogy.
Breaks. All analogies are broken. But Richard Feynman,
the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, used to challenge the
world's best mathematicians to explain simply, in a way
their grandmothers could understand, what they were
doing. And you know what? They could. So this means
that no matter how difficult the problem you are working
on is, if you find a way to explain it simply, you will be
able to understand it much more deeply.
One thing you need to do is insert yourself into whatever
the problem is. Like, here I am in a copper matrix, right?
Barbara McClintock, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist,
used to imagine herself at a genetic level, so she could
understand and see how genes might actually be working.
So that's a trick that some of the greatest thinkers often
use. Try to find a way to get into almost a play, whatever
it is you're trying to understand. If you want to learn
more about what I've talked about here, there is much
more in the book "A Mind For Numbers". And there's so
much more, and it's all free, in the Massive Open online
course for Coursera, through UC San Diego, Learning How
to Learn. And that's the key, except for one thing I'd like
to leave you with this last thought.
We are often told, follow your passion. That's the key of
everything. Just follow your passion and your life will truly
be a better place for it. They have told us. But a few
things: Your passion is built on what you are really good
at. And some things take much longer to do well. So don't
follow your passions.
Expand your passions. And their lives will be greatly
enriched. Thanks a lot.
questions and answers session
MALE SPEAKER: Thanks, Barb, for the fantastic talk. Now
we'll open it up for some questions for Barb. Please raise
your hand if you have any questions and I'll bring you the
microphone.
AUDIENCE: So one of the questions I had was that, you
know, whenever you learn things and tackle difficult
problems, people always say, well, break it down into
smaller pieces that you know how to do. And then I
wondered how that fits into focused and diffuse mode.
Because that seems like dividing a diffuse problem into a
bunch of focused problems.
BARBARA OAKLEY: Actually, what it really relates to is the
idea of chunks. So remember that you have four slots in
working memory. The more you can understand a simple
part and turn it into a fragment, and then into another
small aspect, and turn it into a fragment, and then into
another, then you will focus on doing that. And then in
diffuse mode, you reach up and make the connection
randomly, when you're sleeping, when you go for a walk,
you take a shower, all this kind of stuff. They're all
related, but actually, that's great advice. If you try to
learn it all at once, it's so overwhelming that it's like your
little prefrontal cortex is scrambling madly, but it's
overwhelmed.

READ ALSO: Energy Myths: Climate, Poverty, and a Reason for

Hope by Rachel Pritzker @ TEDxBeaconStreet (Transcript)

So you just want to get part of it, so you can draw it like
a ribbon. Very good question.
AUDIENCE: A piece requires understanding. So when
there is a fragment, does that mean that there was an
experience of understanding that led to that?
BARBARA OAKLEY: Not necessarily. You can learn a word
in a language and you can't know what that word means.
And you can learn many words in a language, but you
don't know what that means. But if you know what they
mean, it can actually make it easier to remember that
word and easier to break it down. And easier to use those
pieces to put together sentences. So, for the most part,
we always want chunking to also involve understanding.
But technically not.
You don't have to have understanding. It's just that
understanding helps put things together so you can
remember them more easily. For example, if I'm trying to
learn the word duck as "duck" in Spanish, if I just say
"duck," I'm trying to remember that word, I don't
understand what it means. , it's a little harder to
remember. But if I know that "duck" means duck, I can
say, what if I'm trying to remember it by having a little
"pot-o" that my duck is floating in, and that can help, that
understanding, help pour? like a bridge to put it in my
mind. So that's a very good question, because people
often think, oh, you build a chunk, it's automatic that you
understand it. Not necessarily. But it's a very nice thing to
have, for the most part.
AUDIENCE: I wanted to ask: we've mentioned that people
who are proficient in one area may find it easier to learn
another area, because they are related parts.
BARBARA OAKLEY: Depending on how close the area is. If
you learn Icelandic, you will probably be able to learn
German more easily. But it can help a little bit with some
of the metacognitive skills, in terms of when you're
learning Chinese, but they're so different that just those
metacognitive things can help you with learning. And
there is still a small fundamental aspect of “how a
language is structured” that I think is common to all
languages. So it depends on how close things are. But
what I find fascinating is that you never know. That's why
it's so important that people come from one field to a
very different field, right? You are a deep sea diver and
you work in nursing.
And you can really bring up some really good ideas. And
the best ideas are often developed by two different types
of people. One is someone who is very young, so they
haven't been indoctrinated into “this is what you think.”
But the other one is the outsiders, people who are trained
in a different discipline, who come and take an initial look
and have a fresh look at what they're seeing. So, good
questions.
AUDIENCE: Maybe something more practical. I'm curious
to know your opinion, if you are familiar with the
Everyday Math curriculum that many schools are teaching
now, which, for example, my children take. And for
example, when they teach mathematics, they emphasize
getting an almost number theory-like feel. Like they
learn, like, four different ways to multiply instead of one,
you know, the way we learned.
And so, for example, my children, they are incredibly
confused by this. I wonder if you are familiar with it. If
you have, how does it fit into this, and if you think so,
please have opinions.
BARBARA OAKLEY: It's different in different parts of the
country. And then I'm out of Michigan. We have different
techniques. It depends, I think it depends on the children.
For some kids, it's great to learn all these different
techniques. For other kids, you know, just learn one
method really well, and then you can escalate from there.
My own personal opinion is that one of the best math
supplement programs is simply Kumon Mathematics. And
I am not a paid spokesperson for Kumon Mathematics.
But what they do is have simple practice and repetition
methods to help develop mastery in your math learning.
And they don't give you a ton of different methods. They
just make sure you know how to multiply. You know how
to divide. And you really know how to do these things. So
I guess my instinct, and I haven't really come across that
question before, is that I'd rather see someone actually
learn it well using a technique. When you are older, you
will be able to see other shapes. But if you have that
really good path, you have it and you can move up.
But if you're learning too many, it can get quite
confusing. I guess it would be the equivalent of growing
up learning eight languages at once. You know, some kids
can handle it. But for many children, it can be a little
confusing to have too many things at once, especially
about one thing.
AUDIENCE: I have a question about reading, and not like
math or anything like that, but if I'm reading, say, a
philosophy book by Nietzsche or Heidegger, for example,
that's 400 pages long. And I'm a slow reader. And I guess
I'm a very concentrated reader, because I grasp and
retain what I've read quite well. But I'm incredibly slow.
So do I have a method for figuring out how to be a fast
reader, but at the same time, be able to retain and deeply
understand what I'm reading?
BARBARA OAKLEY: The short answer is no. Research has
recently shown that speed reading techniques are
actually... a bit, it seems, a bit bogus. Reading something
difficult in more depth simply takes time. I always think,
in the back of my mind, that STEM (science, technology,
engineering, mathematics) disciplines are really difficult
for a lot of people. But then there is the philosophy. I
think that's one of the hardest things for people to
understand in general. It's incredibly important, but it's
difficult.
And I think that just by having a little bit of
understanding and compassion for yourself, you're
addressing one of humanity's most difficult issues. And if
it's slow, well, you're doing fantastic. Because I would be
the same way. And I think a lot of people are really the
same way. There are probably some super fast ones.
Brainy Maserati thinkers that could buzz through those
things. But you would miss the things you would see.
AUDIENCE: I've been wondering how your techniques
apply more generally to children. And you briefly touched
on, actually, an earlier question, practice and repetition,
practice and repetition. But more specifically, how do you
get children interested in mathematics so that they
continue practicing?
BARBARA OAKLEY: The way we've been teaching kids is,
it's like, let's give them an introduction to the fun stuff.
We're going to hold them in our hands and let them
release eggs and do all these exciting things. And then
they get to college, and they get to calculus, and it's like
the death march, right? They start dropping like flies.
Because they are not used to that. Everything has always
been fun, right? So we don't do that when we teach
things like music. We don't do that when we teach foreign
languages. But students fall in love with those subjects
because they can gain the experience, in part through a
little hard work through practice and repetition.
So I think part of the reason we have so many kids in this
country who fall off the wagon is that we try to make
everything really exciting and fun. And we forget the
lessons that language students and musicians, sports,
people in sports, dance instructors, everyone knows that
practice and repetition are part of gaining experience.
And when we put it back into the curriculum, it's there,
but it's not as strong as in many other countries. That's
why I think we see so many people coming to this
country with a love and mastery of learning science and
math that isn't growing organically, because we're not
introducing kids in the United States to some of these
ideas. Also, the additional importance of practice and
repetition. So these are my thoughts.
We do a little bit of that, but really not enough. Because
for a long time, unfortunately, there has been a feeling
that too much practice and repetition in mathematics will
kill your creativity. Instead of the reality, which is that
every great expert has to practice and repeat what they
are learning. So those are my thoughts on that.
AUDIENCE: Hello. So understanding is important and
context is important. And speaking of that, there could be
a top-down approach and a bottom-up approach. So what
do you think is better? Is it better to understand the big
picture and then try to study the topic? Or is it better to
study the small pieces and build this understanding from -
or maybe we have to mix it up?
BARBARA OAKLEY: You got it exactly. You don't want to
be doing small things all the time. And you don't want to
be perched high up all the time. You want to be...it's hard
to understand what the big picture is when you're...you
learn one little snippet and you learn another little
snippet. But you have to start integrating that into the
bigger picture as much as you can. And then you want to
be coming and going. One of the techniques that I didn't
talk about, which is very important, is interlacing.
And many times, when you're learning, for example,
some new technique in calculus, you'll do 10 problems
that are pretty much the same as learning that technique
in calculus. But you don't want to do that. You want to
solve one or two problems using that technique. Go to
another section of the book. Do that problem.
Kind of a comparison: wait a minute, why am I using this
technique here and that technique here? Because they
are different? Flip back. Do another of the first
techniques. Then switch to another one, we're not
training people, we don't even have our books set to
collate. And we have to start doing that, because that's
what it really is: it's the practice of repetition, but mixed
with interlacing, which creates flexibility. So those are my
thoughts on that.
AUDIENCE: Like when I was in high school and college
and studying math, I was perfectly fine. Like I did well
and I did well in the tests. But my problem was always
trying to apply it outside of that environment, like trying
to use it practically or in everyday life, or whatever it was
that needed certain math skills, I just never could do it.
And I was wondering if you had any kind of techniques or
strategies or ideas about how there's a way to take math
out of school and be able to apply it in normal life, or just
outside of school.
BARBARA OAKLEY: That's a very good question. One of
the things that people do is they look at the math and
say, how am I going to use this? In fact, I remember
being called into the principal's office in eighth grade
because I wasn't doing my math. In fact, I was reading a
book. So I protested to the director, saying it had no real
use.
I would never use it. And they gave up on me, at that
moment. But it's something like that. When you're in the
gym and you're lifting a specific type of weight, are you
ever going to go out into the outside world and lift that
type of weight? Of course, no. But you're actually using
muscles that you could use related muscles when you lift
your luggage to get in and put it in the airplane
compartment.
So what you're doing when you're learning something in
math and science is you're developing sort of neural
pathways. You may not use that exact one, but in
surprising ways, they can shape the way you think about
things. So an example is this. They did a study and found
out, you know, there are some kids who finish college.
And you can take courses that have almost no math,
really, involved.
You know, mathematics for poets or these types of
courses. And you continue all the way. But people who
have this kind of experience, where they've had very little
exposure, when you control every aspect of what's
happening that you can reasonably control, those who
don't have any real background in math are much more
likely to default on mortgages. of their homes. So you
know, think about that. But in reality, you can think
smarter.
What happens now? You are really concerned about the
environment. Then someone comes up and says, well, we
have to have electric cars. Sounds great, right? But if
you're trained, you have some kind of experience, you
could go, yes, but wait a minute. What about the effect of
batteries on the environment, right? Do they really
produce more pollution? In fact, does that energy transfer
create more harm to the environment than a regular
gasoline engine? If you're taught to think a little more
rationally and carefully about things, you're actually using
those intellectual muscles in ways that you haven't really,
you don't really realize how important that really is. So in
a way, though, just reflecting, just a little bit in a different
way, because your question is very deep.
When you're learning a language, one of the things you're
doing is you're learning, you're practicing. And it can be
really difficult to go meet someone and talk to them, who
speaks that language. But that real-life experience is
what brings the language to life and what fuels the desire
to learn it. So I think about finding ways - when you're
walking and you're thinking about something you just
learned mathematically, look around and try to bring it
into the environment you're in. And try to think about it
that way.
That's a great question. Because it helps us be aware of
the richness of life around us. So I think trying to bring
some of these ideas that you're learning into the lives
around us is a brilliant thing and a great attitude. So I
thank you very much for having me here.