The Feynman Technique
Learning how to learn.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.“
— Benjamin Franklin
We live in a knowledge-centric world. In such a society where unlimited supply of information is available to everyone, the man who truly understands the information in front of him is at an advantage.
We’ve all heard that “knowledge is power” but rarely do we realize that knowledge is not just the accumulation of information. The gifts of knowledge are bestowed upon only those who fully comprehend the meaning and nature of that information. The truly knowledgeable are not the ones who’ve read a thousand books, but rather the ones who’ve been able to understand them.
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein
In order to escape the never ending cycle of reading — forgetting and re-reading, we can make use of the Feynman Technique, which is a method with which we can learn almost anything.
This technique is named after the Nobel Prize winning Physicist — Richard P. Feynman. Feynman was not only a exceptional Physicist, but also a great teacher. He was notoriously famous for asking people to explain things to him in a simpler manner in order to find whether they truly know what they are talking about.
It is a simple technique and can be divided into 4 simple steps:
1.Gather the information.
The first step is actually gaining information about the topic which you want to learn. Decide on a topic which you want to cover, then start reading books, journals or watching tutorials for the particular subject matter to gain information about the particular topic.
2. Teach it.
The next step is to actually try and teach the concept to someone else. For this, you can write what you’ve understood about the topic in plain and simple language. You could instead explain the concept out loud. Even better, you could mix the two approaches and write and speak about the concept just like a teacher does. The important think to remember is that you have to act as if you are explaining the concept to a kid or to someone who has no knowledge of the topic.
Pro Tip: If you know two languages, you can read in one and explain in the other.
3. Analyse and Optimize.
The next step is to find out the possible gaps in your understanding or topics over which you feel your understanding is not shaky. Once you have identified them, you should re-read the materials to cover up those gaps or ask from help in order to solidify your understanding. This step is extremely crucial and thus, one must remain honest to oneself. You should not act as if you’ve completely understood the topic when you can clearly see that you are iterating just the jargon you’ve memorized.
4. While Understanding!=100%
Repeat the above steps until you are comfortable with the concept. Carefully analyse the way you explain and find out areas where you can come with an even simpler explanation or an analogy the easily explains the topic.
Application
You can use the Feynman technique for almost any kind of learning, but as it is probably clear to you, it is a time consuming process.
If you are at the start of the semester and wish to do well this time in your exams, you can use the Feynman Technique to quite effectively improve your scores. But if you have an exam the next day and have started studying now, I would advise against using this technique. On the other hand though, if you’ve prepared well enough and want to test your preparation this method could work really well in highlighting the areas were you are a little weak.
Does the Feynman Technique even work?
No wonder you would be asking this question. Considering the simplicity of this method, one would be naturally tempted to ask if this actually works.
Speaking from my experience, I can assure you that this technique works like a charm. I used this technique while trying to learn Machine Learning. While I can say that I am no expert, but I am in a better position than where I would’ve been if I tried to go about the usual way of completing MOOCs and straight away trying to apply the concepts. While I do not say that the later technique is wrong or bad, but I see my friends trying that approach and building models without the slightest idea of why things are working( this is assuming things are actually working, which most of the time are not!).
The Semantic Memory is a type of Long Term Memory in which conceptual information is represented, including semantic(meanings) and lexical(word) information. The Feynman Technique helps in simplifying a concept so that you are no longer trying to build on top of shaky foundations and are actually able to understand the meaning of what you are trying to learn.
“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts.”
― Richard P. Feynman
Through The Habitual Programmer, I wish to help you build the necessary habits to slowly but significantly improve your programming skills.
Small habits aimed at bringing about a 1% increase in your proficiency could compound over time to bring massive change. After all, we are a product of our habits.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
