My son is doing very well in an intermediate calculus course at a very challenging university.  Now, I knew a bit of calculus myself “back in the day”.  I majored in physics as an undergrad and upper level physics uses a lot of advanced calculus.  I liked it and did pretty well at it.  In fact, I was an instructor for my university’s introductory calculus class after I graduated.

So I thought it might be interesting to see what questions my son had on his calculus midterm and I asked him to send me some to look at.  Well, it was interesting, but not in the way I had hoped.  I knew zip.  It was as if I had never known any of it.

That really isn’t surprising.  We all know we forget what we don’t use.  If we want to stay competent with a body of information, we need to use. 

Here’s a routine that only takes a few minutes to raise your retention from 20% to over 80% in the long term.

The key is review.  If we emerge from a period of learning, say a 45 minute lecture, with a solid grasp of the information and do nothing with it, our retention at 6 months will be miniscule.However, short periods of review, totaling maybe 30 to 45 minutes over that six months can raise our retention rate to over 80%.

Without going into learning theory and theories of the interaction between short term and long term memory (if such things exist), actively attempting to recall and interact with data makes it more readily accessible.  There’s a theory that claims that once you’ve learned, or even simply experienced something, you always have the memory of it, it’s just a matter of being able to access it.  In this theory,  I still know calculus; I’ve just forgotten how to remember it.  

To dramatically raise your retention of information, try this type of review.  After the learning period, look the material over and pick out the highlights and the main points then actively attempt to recall them, checking your notes or text or whatever if need be. Do this either immediately or a little later in the day. 

Then do the same thing the next day.  Then in a week.  And again in a  month.

Feel free to repeat the review even more often, but even this little bit will make the information much more accessible.  If you’ve taken notes, you’ll find that phases in the notes trigger recall of more complex information.

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