Everyone knows about the learning curve. It refers to the difficulty of learning something new. There is a steep learning curve for astrophysics — a relatively flat learning curve for bouncing a ball.
Not nearly as popular, but far more critical is the forgetting curve. The forgetting curve is the idea that you forget things over time if you don’t make any effort to retain that information. Now, this isn’t 100% true of course. Some things are stuck in there forever like my best friends home phone numbers from when I was a kid. Those aren’t going anywhere. They have no value (those phones haven’t existed in probably 20 years), and I never try to remember them, but there they are.
Other things fade quickly. The name of the guy who I met last night at the school fundraiser who’s kid is good friends with my kid. Ug. No idea.
One way to break the forgetting curve is interval practice. You can disrupt the forgetting curve by trying to remember something at different points in time. For example, I like the idea of studying cardiology first when you get ready for your big day. That way every time I do practice questions, and one on cardio comes up I’m remembering the cardio stuff and breaking up the forgetting curve.
Sometimes you need a lot of effort to disrupt the forgetting curve, and sometimes just a little will do. The Final Step is a perfect tool for this. You study topic A and week later you go through The Final Step questions on topic A. The following week you study topic B, and you go through the questions on Topic A and B. On the third week you study Topic C and you go through the questions in the Final Step on topics A, B, and C.
That’s what I did for my latest PANRE.
Disrupting the forgetting curve: The Final Step
Brian
