Cheery Friday Greetings from Learning How to Learn! Mar 4, 2016

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Time to Go Surfing—or to Ride a Unicycle

In the MOOC, we use the example of a surfing zombie to represent process versus product. That is, the idea of getting into the flow of your work. It turns out that the surfing zombie is a good metaphor for something else—the value of learning a new sport. Read this great New York Times article by Gretchen Reynolds: “Learning a New Sport May Be Good for the Brain.”

A Free Online Bachelor’s Level Biology Education

Learning How to Learner Brian Brookshire has put together an excellent post on how to capture the bulk of a bachelor’s degree in biology entirely through free MOOCs offered by top tier universities. As he relates in his posting, Brian has a bachelor’s from Stanford, and would like to pursue his doctorate in biology—despite the fact that he hasn’t taken any formal college or high school courses in biology! How to get himself prepared at low cost? You guessed it—MOOCs. (If you are a top researcher looking for a highly creative, keenly-motivated student, I’d suggest looking at Brian.)

Taiwan in the News!

Taiwan has some VERY exciting MOOC-related activities coming up—Barb will be there on April 21-22. Aren’t you curious now to know what’s going to happen? Stay tuned!

A Mind for Numbers has been continuing to grow globally in popularity—it’s now published in traditional Chinese: 用對腦，從此不再怕數字：學會如何學習，以如何創意思考，解決(幾乎)所有的問題! Enjoy!

Great Books about Statistics

We have a minor hobby of reading books about statistics and probability. In fact, statistics and probability shape everything around you, so the more you learn, the deeper your awareness of life. You don’t need to understand every detail of the math to still pick up useful insights. In fact, many of these books don’t rely on equations to convey their main ideas. Here’s our “all star” listing:

• The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, David Salsburg. One of the best histories of statistics, wrapped up in beautiful stories. A wonderful book!
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. This first is still our favorite of Levitt and Dubner’s wonderful series of books. You couldn’t find a better way to understand everything from how and why school teachers cheat to the strange world of sumo wrestling.
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t, by Nate Silver. Sometimes it’s hard to get a grasp on Bayesian ways of thinking. Not when Nate Silver writes about it! He not only makes everything easy to read—he makes it exciting!
• The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne. Okay, we’re suckers for history with regards World War II, so that makes this excellent book a “two-fer”–fascinating insights about probability mixed with compelling stories about vital historical events.

Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

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