Why are different kinds of learning so differently compressible?
If I can work through a textbook in 20 1-hour sittings, I usually get similar results from 10 2-hour or 5 4-hour sessions. But piano isn’t that way at all: a 20x1hr piece simply can’t be learned in 5 sessions IME.
Conversation
One explanation might be that when learning piano pieces, successive sessions rely heavily on previous sessions having been consolidated, whereas many “book-learning” topics are somewhat more breadth-shaped.
Another might be that some tasks drain attention faster.
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Other examples of learning which don’t seem to compress very well:
– learning how to draw
– learning how to design user interfaces
– learning how to write
Ones which seem to compress well:
– learning how to cook
– learning a new programming language
– learning a spoken language
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Replying to
Right, it’s a great point: obviously massed learning produces less reliably recall than spaced learning! And yet language learning still feels compressible! When I spend more time on a language I really do make much more progress. Maybe it’s just *relatively* compressible.
Thinking a little more… it’s also true that the spacing effect doesn’t tell us much about our capacity to learn *new* material in a given session. That may be what I’m feeling in the compressibility of language learning.
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