{"id":14772,"date":"2022-12-20T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=14772"},"modified":"2022-12-19T07:16:12","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T15:16:12","slug":"best-essays-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/20\/best-essays-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"My Best Essays of 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote 40 essays in 2022<\/a>. While far from my most prolific year, I am pleased with how most of them turned out. Thus, to give myself a little writing break over the holidays, I thought I\u2019d share some of my favorites from this year.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Why Don\u2019t We Use the Math We Learn in School?<\/a> Years after drilling the algorithm for long division, when was the last time you used it? I explore evidence that people are surprisingly bad at the math they ought to know well. I also explain some reasons why math doesn\u2019t seem to play as prominent a role in real life as it probably should.<\/li>\n
  2. Cognitive Load Theory and Its Applications for Learning<\/a>. Why do we find some subjects confusing? Why do we struggle to keep up in math or physics classes? I review the major findings of cognitive load theory, which seeks to explain our learning successes (and failures) in terms of how our brains process information.<\/li>\n
  3. How Do We Learn Complex Skills?<\/a> Understanding ACT-R Theory. ACT-R is John Anderson\u2019s career-long quest to integrate many diverse findings in cognitive psychology into a single model of the process of thinking and reasoning.<\/li>\n
  4. How Does Understanding Work?<\/a> What goes on in our heads when we understand text we\u2019re reading? Construction-Integration suggests we comprehend text by generating multiple interpretations, which then \u201cstabilize\u201d into a coherent picture.<\/li>\n
  5. Variability, Not Repetition, is the Key to Mastery<\/a>. Varied examples, contexts, problems and methods all lead to more robust learning than narrow repetition.<\/li>\n
  6. Cultural Literacy: Does Knowledge Need to Be Deep to Be Useful?<\/a> I review E.D. Hirsch\u2019s controversial bestseller. Hirsch argues that the shallow, fact-based knowledge we largely forget from our classroom days is far more important than people realize. Schools shouldn\u2019t shy away from teaching these facts, and our society would be better off if we made this aim of education more explicit.<\/li>\n
  7. Failure is a Lousy Teacher<\/a>. I refute the commonly-held belief that failure is the key to learning. We gain less information from failures than successes (in most domains). Even \u201cuseful\u201d failure it is usually closely followed by success. Failure is also demotivating and can encourage us to overlearn lessons that we would do better to forget.<\/li>\n
  8. Brain Training Doesn\u2019t Work<\/a>. We don\u2019t get smarter by strengthening mental muscles. Chess doesn\u2019t help you think strategically, and Sudoku doesn\u2019t make you better at quantitative reasoning. The evidence here is frankly overwhelming, but it\u2019s so at odds with folk psychology that many have a hard time accepting it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year. See you in 2023!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Eight of my favorite essays that I wrote last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-personal-development","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMy Best Essays of 2022 - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/20\/best-essays-2022\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Best Essays of 2022 - 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