In "Quantum mechanics distilled," and I introduce application prompts, which have you use what you've learned to solve a problem. You won't be able to answer from memory but they're light enough to solve in your head. quantum.country/qm
A fun data point:
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Normally 85+% of readers answer our prompts correctly. But I noticed: one question in our new essay has a 60% success rate.
Maybe it's the 1st application prompt? No, there'd been two already—but you could solve them through symbol shuffling. This was the 1st to require thought.
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Talking to readers about it, it's clear that this prompt was a bit jarring. Instead of drawing on automaticity, trying to remember an answer, this one asks for an answer you must produce anew. Definitely a heavier lift, but it sounds like "a good kind of hard" so far.
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The mnemonic medium relies heavily on the "lightness" of it and relative fungibility of its prompts, so we'll need to walk a careful line as we push on these more elaborate types of questions.
If you've read the new essay, let us know about your experience with the prompts!
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Wrote some notes on this topic this morning: notes.andymatuschak.org/z7U6zXNGgTz1aE
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Replying to @andy_matuschak
Thank you so much for this work.
In this context, I suppose fungible prompts would be ones that can be shuffled or replaced with variations?
Can you elaborate on the ways in which the medium depends on the lightness and fungibility of the prompts?
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Doesn’t the lower success rate of a question that requires more thought, less automaticity, imply trouble regarding the robustness of their learning?
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