SDS 394: Teach It

(00:15):
Welcome back to the SuperDataScience Podcast, everybody. Super pumped to have you back here on the show. Today, I stumbled across something super cool. So I was preparing this FiveMinuteFriday episode, I was doing some research and I made this discovery for myself that took this FiveMinuteFriday episode to whole new level. So today we’re going to talk about how well we learn things, how well we retain information. And specifically the thing that I stumbled across is called the learning pyramid, also known as the cone of learning, the cone of experience, the learning cone and the cone of retention, the pyramid of learning and the pyramid of retention. 

(00:57):
It is a group of popular learning models. So according to Wikipedia, it is a group of popular learning models and representations relating different degrees of retention, induced from various type of learning. A very complicated description of something super simple. Basically it’s a pyramid that shows how we learn, how we retain things depending on how we learn them, right? So depending on the medium, the type of activity that we’re engaged in we’ll retain information better or worse. So let’s go through this pyramid. 

(01:32):
What do you think we retain the worst? What kind of learning experience we’re going to retain the worst? And the worst one that we retain is listening to a lecture. If you just listen to a lecture, you will retain according to lots of different research that was done in this space, guess how much? You’ll retain 5% of the information. So we’re talking about not a day or two days, like longterm retention. Longterm retention, just listen to a lecture and forget about it. Well, not forget about it, just don’t do anything else, 5% of the information. 

(02:05):
Next step in this pyramid is if you read something, so if you read a book or that same lecture materials, you will retain 10% of information. If you watch an audio visual, like watching an educational video on YouTube, for example, or looking at an infographic, you’ll retain about 20% of information. If you watch a demonstration, for instance, attending an exhibit at a museum or something like that, then you will retain about 30% of the information. If you’re engaged in a group discussion of certain element of information, something that you’re learning, then you will retain 50%. No wonder at university, for example, you have things like a lecture, and then you have tutorials on that same lecture with a tutor because there, you can discuss things. And that’s important if you want to learn better, make sure you participate in those discussions, put your hand up because then you are benefiting from this part of the pyramid. You’re going to retain much more than just listening to it or actually reading about it. You’re going to be part of the group discussion, actively participating, 50% is what you will retain. 

(03:24):
Next is if you practice what you learned. If you practice what you learned, you will retain 75%. That’s things like hands-on workshops or doing your homework assignments and things like that. If you actually put that into practice, you will retain about 75%. Again, no wonder at university, you have assignments or you have to do project work. And often that project work is in group discussion. Universities have been around for a long time and they design these things like that on purpose. When you’re learning online, very different, right? You’re just watching the audio visual part. So that’s about 20% you’re going to retain. You need to create that for yourself. If there are homework assignments, you need to do them. If there are quizzes, you need to do them. Participate into group discussions, however you can. 

(04:15):
So that is practice and that’s kind of where university stops, right, or most known forms of education they stop. And so is it true that the most you can get is 75%? Well, no, there’s one more step, one more element in this pyramid of learning that will give you a whole 90%. You can retain 90% of the information and you probably have guessed it by the title of this episode is that if you teach that information. If you teach what you learn to someone else immediately, so as soon as you learn it within a couple of hours or a day, I guess. We would have to look into research papers to understand what the time limits of this are. But basically if you teach it as soon as possible to somebody, you will retain up to 90% of the information that you learned. How powerful is that? 

(05:09):
And unfortunately, it’s not integrated into most curriculums, most education programs. The good news is that you can integrate that yourself. If you learn something in an online course or somewhere, go and teach it to a friend, send them an email, or get on the phone and explain it to them, or go teach it to your parents, to your spouse, to your kids. Teach it to somebody who’s going to listen to. And you want to try and, of course, help them learn, but it’s mostly about accessing that information in your brain and teaching. And when you’re going to be teaching, you’re going to make mistakes because you’re doing it for the first time. You’re accessing this information for the first time and you’re going to lose certain parts, you don’t remember. And you will have to go and relearn. You’ll have to revise, refresh, or you’ll have to come up with these conclusions yourself, link all the missing parts, that whole structure in your brain. 

(06:05):
So if you want to have the highest power of retention in whatever form you’ve gotten the information in the first place, you went to a lecture, you read a book, you watched an audio visual, you watched an online course, go and teach it to someone. So for instance, if you’re reading a cool book, like I’m reading now a book about psychology of how humans think irrationally, that’s fun and it’s going to be fun for anybody to share that. Go and share it with somebody right away. You read a chapter and try to explain it to somebody. You will retain it much better. Why is this important? a: you will, of course like… Why is teaching important? a: it’s because you will learn better. Two, there’s an additional benefit, right? 

(06:48):
If you start teaching, for instance, if you’re learning data science, Python, R, whatever it is, Tableau Power BI, any tool click, you’re learning deep learning, if you go and then write, for example, a blog post for others to learn from, so you’re teaching others, not direct, it’s indirect teaching, but you go through the same process of accessing that information and structuring a bit in your mind. And you write a blog post or several blog posts to teach others about it, so a: you will learn better, but b: it’s really good for your CV for your LinkedIn. 

(07:21):
So we were hiring a data analyst in past weeks, and I was interviewing people. And one of the candidates, she actually teaches Tableau. So not only does she do work around this, she has participated in workshops, she’s ran workshops just to help others learn. As soon as I see that on a CV or in their cover letter, that a person actually teaches what we’re looking for, boom, right away, plus five points, plus 100 points in my mind, because now I know that this person, if they’re able to teach, that means they understand it really well. That means I have much more certainty around their technical skills. And I’m much more likely to invite them to our interview process, so much more likely to shortlist them.
(08:08):
So keep that in mind, teaching not only has the immense benefit of retaining information, also, if you document it in terms of video, audio, text, online, and you can link to it, or even if you say, you’ve run a workshop, it doesn’t have to be a recording of the workshop. You can just include that on your CV, on your LinkedIn, as long as you’re able to portray that, that can really help you with your current job applications or with job applications in the future if you ever decide to change jobs. 

(08:42):
So there you go. My challenge for you this weekend is to just think about how you can teach someone something, right? So try it out, try teaching somebody in your close vicinity, something you learned recently, or you will learn soon, but also think about how can you make this a habit, something that you can incorporate into your daily or weekly schedule, where you spend a bit of time teaching, right? It doesn’t have to be as complex or a workshop, that would be preferred, but even writing a blog post or recording a short video for YouTube, that’s already going to benefit you a lot. On that note, hope you enjoyed this episode. And I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.