{"id":14160,"date":"2022-07-05T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=14160"},"modified":"2022-09-09T04:20:43","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T12:20:43","slug":"85-percent-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/05\/85-percent-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"The 85% Rule for Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Learning, it seems, is optimized for both humans and machines when we succeed around 85% of the time. From a recent paper<\/a> by Wilson, Shenhav, Straccia and Cohen:<\/p>\n

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In many situations we find that there is a sweet spot in which training is neither too easy nor too hard, and where learning progresses most quickly. [\u2026] For all of these stochastic gradient-descent based learning algorithms, we find that the optimal error rate for training is around 15.87% or, conversely, that the optimal training accuracy is about 85%.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you\u2019re always successful, it\u2019s hard to know what to improve. If you constantly fail, you won\u2019t learn what works. Only when we have a mixture of success and failure can we draw a contrast between good and bad strategies.<\/p>\n

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These findings agree closely with the 80% success rate found by Barak Rosenshine in his study of successful classrooms<\/a>, despite coming from a completely different theoretical background:<\/p>\n

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In a study of fourth-grade mathematics, it was found that 82 percent of students\u2019 answers were correct in the classrooms of the most successful teachers, but the least successful teachers had a success rate of only 73 percent. A high success rate during guided practice also leads to a higher success rate when students are working on problems on their own.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The research also suggests that the optimal success rate for fostering student achievement appears to be about 85 percent. A success rate of 85 percent shows that students are learning the material, and it also shows that the students are challenged.<\/p>\n

How You Can Apply the 85% Rule<\/h2>\n
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