Speaking and Thermodynamics

“It could have been otherwise.” — Jane Kenyon, “Otherwise”

Pomodoro

Yesterday, I learned about a new studying technique known as the Pomodoro Technique. Basically, set a timer for 25 minutes to do something important, take a break for 5 minutes, and repeat.

This sounds like a pretty good strategy to me, so I will now be using it every day. I once tried to split things into 10 minute intervals, but that just got annoying with the timers. I hope that I can incorporate this Pomodoro idea into a future React website with Rafe. I would prefer creating a local time variable because global would be hard to deal with, but I guess there is no big difference.

Actually, if the global time changed, e.g. by flying to another country, would the timer break?

How to Speak

Since two or more years ago, I have been getting Patrick Winston’s “How to Speak” video lecture in my YouTube recommended. I decided to watch it about a week ago and was not disappointed. Since he is famous for doing work in AI, I was surprised that his teaching skills were so good. However, I guess that if a lecture of all things was recommended, it must be very good. The algorithm does not like long-form content.

So, I created my own YouTube series in which I react to the lecture in 20 minute intervals. Since I did go through the description and click on some links, I have learned quite a bit about Professor Winston. One interesting thing that he does is repeat the same thing over and over, which he claims is because at any time, about 20% of the students will be fogged out…

Interdisciplinary

I invited my social studies teacher from last year to come talk to my AP Statistics class about our final project, which is to find some claim and disprove it with statistics. She actually helped out a lot and it was not awkward in the classroom at all, which is the best possible option. I think that the two teachers could actually consider making this a staple final project of each year.

Thermodynamics

Since my summer research topic is related to thermodynamics and my English teacher took the class to the school library to find some books, I thought that I would read a book about thermodynamics on my own time in addition to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

The introduction has been very cool, with the main topic being the laws and entropy. There are many examples of how scientists have applied the entropic forces of depletion/excluded volume forces in order to create order in biology and material sciences. If I did not read the book, I would not even know about it.

An analogy might be that rocks washed by the ocean will become sand, but also that the rocks on the ocean are arranged in rows by size. A double-edged sword.

Persona

For English, we had to discuss the ethos and persona of the rhetor, or author. Gladwell seems very approachable, which is a result of many factors.

He purposefully chooses to write for an 8th grade audience, so the book is easy to read. He uses personal pronouns and the second person to make the book more informal and bring the reader along on his train of thought. Speaking of which, his logic is organized very well with numerous case studies to prove his point. In addition to this, he is self-conscious of where he is in the line of logic and will converse with the reader accordingly.

For example, if he is reaching the end of a case study, he may ask if the reader is convinced or if it just seems like common sense. Or, like Patrick Winston would appreciate, he makes a promise at the beginning of the book about how the reader’s sense of success will be redefined.

On the topic of how he compartmentalizes the book’s logic, his major point in part 1 is that people succeed because of opportunity. In order to demonstrate that point, he uses each chapter to demonstrate different types of opportunity. Luck is a major contributor to amount of practice time and therefore, future growth. All of this comes together for the first part.

In addition, he boosts his credibility by doing case studies that the reader might somewhat know, but not completely. For example, Mozart is seen as a prodigy and nothing more, but Gladwell reveals that Mozart wasn’t that great until he had 10000 hours put into music.

Conclusion

Ultimately, with my pomodoro technique, I think that my learning will be unparalleled and unperperpendiculared.