This book has multi-coloured pages, presumably to help you remember and harness the Von Restorff effect, covered in the book. And it tries to put in various pictures etc. to help your Association and thereby allow you to recall better.
And the writers are all 'experts' in this area, so presumably this stuff works for people. Me, I want you to get to the point and I'll summarise the information in ways that I can remember it, I don't really need the author giving me the associations, because I need to create them. So I guess I have a slightly different learning theory than the authors.
So guess, what? Yep, I thought the book had a lot of padding. Which I found annoying because it has a lot of good information.
What's the title? "The most important Graph in the world" on what page does the book really start discussing the "most important graph in the world" page 35. You can get a feel for the kind of padding that they use on this promotional video by Jennifer Goddard. In this video you see the graph for about 3 seconds, and learn nothing about it.
So what is the graph? You can see it on the page promoting the book I assume the image is copyright Buzan so I haven't included it here. (shhh, but I don't think the graph image is really that important)
It collates the important principles covered by the book:
- Primacy Effect - we remember things covered early in the learning experience
- Recency Effect - we remember things covered late in the learning experience
- Von Restorff effect - we remember things that are different and unique
- Association Effect - we remember things by linking them to our own models
- Understanding and Misunderstanding Effect - we can remember stuff that didn't happen
- Interest Effect - you'll remember stuff you are interested in
- Meaning and Insight - we piece things together as a whole
The graph and executive summary are available from the official site as a pdf, this also covers Chapter one where the graph is explained.
The book then elaborates on these principles with 'handy' hints and tips.
Use the Primacy Effect by making sure you make a good first impression (sadly the book didn't do this for me), start presentations with a strong opening, plan out your week at the start.
Use the Recency Effect by create a good last impression, take breaks if you want to learn stuff (that way you have more starts, and ends), end presentations with a call to action.
etc. The book has a chapter or so about each of these principles.
Part 2 works better for me. Small, concise, practical chapters. Particularly chapter 13, which is mostly contained in Matrix Templates and Mind Map from the official site.
Chapter 14 presents an acronym to help us understand how we learn TEFCAS
- Trial - an experiment
- Event
- Feedback
- Check
- Adjust - based on the feedback
- Success - did we move closer to our goal or not?
This model is compared to the Scientific Method:
- Hypothesis
- Experimental Design
- The Experiment
- Results
- Conclusions
- Next Experiment - design what to do next after analysing the results
Chapter 17 provides some helpful hints on adapting your presentation style around these principles. And the later chapters provide various examples relating the principles to PR and how to use them for time management so that you learn effectively
I found the book a little slow but if you like lots of examples and 'real world' association then this book might work well for you. Certainly all the principles on offer are very important, I just didn't like the presentation.
Useful Links:
- http://www.thinkbuzan.com/intl/products/books/mostimportantgraph
- http://www.mostimportantgraph.com/
- Matrix Templates and Mind Map
- graph and executive summary and chapter 1
- http://www.mostimportantgraph.com/resources/
- amazon.co.uk | amazon.com
- Other book reviews and summaries of this title
- http://staroversky.com/the-most-important-graph-in-the-world-book-summary/
- every other review I saw seemed to be from either promotional material or people who had been given a free copy to review. The reviews on amazon seem pretty positive.
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