How visualizations help you learn (and how to use them)

Do you create visualizations while you learn? If not, you should. Here's why.

00:00 Introduction
00:31 Three advantages to visualizations
2:15 What should you visualize?
2:59 The cardinal sin

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Image acknowledgements:

The initial three visualizations come from the Dataisbeautiful subreddit. Here are the credits:

Long COVID in the U.S., by MetricT:   / oc_percent_of_adult_population_currently  

Brazil's GDP, by Latinometrics:   / oc_in_2011_brazils_gdp_per_capita_was_27k_...  

Mandela Effect, by YouGov_Official:   / oc_americans_are_more_likely_to_hold_false...  

Jacque Minard's famous illustration of Napoleon's campaign grabbed from http://activehistory.ca/wp-content/up.... Thanks, Active History!

Water cycle image: John Evans and Howard Periman, USGS, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi....

John Snow's map of the broad street water pump cholera outbreak (originally from 1854). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sn....

Causal ecosystem image, from one of Tina Grotzer's papers. Grotzer, T. A., Kamarainen, A. M., Tutwiler, M. S., Metcalf, S., & Dede, C. (2013). Learning to reason about ecosystems dynamics over time: The challenges of an event-based causal focus. BioScience, 63(4), 288-296. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/a.... She's an academic who does great work on how students think of causal relationships.

The "argument" image comes from a piece by Deanna Kuhn, a pioneer in studying argumentation. Kuhn, D., Goh, W., Iordanou, K., & Shaenfield, D. (2008). Arguing on the computer: A microgenetic study of developing argument skills in a computer‐supported environment. Child development, 79(5), 1310-1328. https://www.educationforthinking.org/...

References:

This video was largely inspired by the chapter "V is for Visualization" in the ABCs of How We Learn by Schwartz, Tsang, and Blair. Definitely recommend it.