complicated things. It’s not our intention to argue that complicated things—law, medicine, construction, programming, teaching—can be pared down to two or three compact messages. We obviously can’t replace a school of architecture with a single compact idea (“Keep the building from falling down”).
This leads us to an important issue that we haven’t discussed yet:
How do you turn a freshman into an architect?
How does complexity emerge from simplicity? We will argue that it is possible to create complexity through the artful use of simplicity. If simple ideas are staged and layered correctly, they can very quickly become complex.
Let us teach you what a “pomelo” is. (If you already know what a pomelo is, be a good sport and feign ignorance.) Here is one way that we can explain to you what a pomelo is:
E XPLANATION 1: A pomelo is the largest citrus fruit. The rind is very thick but soft and easy to peel away. The resulting fruit has a light yellow to coral pink flesh and can vary from juicy to slightly dry and from seductively spicy-sweet to tangy and tart.
Quick question: Based on this explanation, if you mixed pomelo juice half and half with orange juice, would it taste good? You might make a guess, but the answer is probably a bit ambiguous. Let’s move on to an alternative explanation:
E XPLANATION 2: A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.
Explanation 2 sticks a flag on a concept that you already know: a grapefruit. When we tell you that a pomelo is
like
a grapefruit, you callup a mental image of a grapefruit. Then we tell you what to change about it: It’s “supersized.” Your visualized grapefruit grows accordingly.
We’ve made it easier for you to learn a new concept by tying it to a concept that you already know. In this case, the concept is “grapefruit.” “Grapefruit” is a
schema
that you already have. (“Schema” is a bit of technical jargon from psychology, but it’s so useful that we think it’s worth carrying through the book.)
Psychologists define schema as a collection of generic properties of a concept or category. Schemas consist of lots of prerecorded information stored in our memories. If someone tells you that she saw a great new sports car, a picture immediately springs to mind, filled with generic properties. You know what “sports cars” are like. You picture something small and two-door, with a convertible top perhaps. If the car in your picture moves, it moves fast. Its color is almost certainly red. Similarly, your schema of “grapefruit” also contains a cluster of generic properties: yellow-pink color, tart flavor, softball-sized, and so on.
By calling up your grapefruit schema, we were able to teach you the concept of pomelo much faster than if we had mechanically listed all the attributes of a pomelo. Note, too, that it’s easier to answer the question about the blend of pomelo and orange juice. You know that grapefruit juice blends well with OJ, so the pomelo schema
inherits
this property from the grapefruit schema. (By the way, to be complete, Explanation 1 is itself full of schemas. “Citrus fruit” is a schema, “rind” is a schema, and “tangy” is a schema. Explanation 2 is easier to parse only because “grapefruit” is a higher-level schema—a schema composed of other schemas.)
By using schemas, Explanation 2 improves both our comprehension and our memory. Let’s think about the two definitions of “pomelo” in terms of the inverted pyramid structure. What’s the lead? Well, with Explanation 1 the lead is: citrus fruit. After the lead, there is no clear hierarchy; depending on what catches people’s attention, they might remember the rind info (“very thick but soft and easy topeel away”) or the color info (“light yellow to coral pink”) or the juiciness info or the taste info.
With Explanation 2, the lead is: grapefruit-like. The second paragraph is: supersized. The third paragraph
This leads us to an important issue that we haven’t discussed yet:
How do you turn a freshman into an architect?
How does complexity emerge from simplicity? We will argue that it is possible to create complexity through the artful use of simplicity. If simple ideas are staged and layered correctly, they can very quickly become complex.
Let us teach you what a “pomelo” is. (If you already know what a pomelo is, be a good sport and feign ignorance.) Here is one way that we can explain to you what a pomelo is:
E XPLANATION 1: A pomelo is the largest citrus fruit. The rind is very thick but soft and easy to peel away. The resulting fruit has a light yellow to coral pink flesh and can vary from juicy to slightly dry and from seductively spicy-sweet to tangy and tart.
Quick question: Based on this explanation, if you mixed pomelo juice half and half with orange juice, would it taste good? You might make a guess, but the answer is probably a bit ambiguous. Let’s move on to an alternative explanation:
E XPLANATION 2: A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.
Explanation 2 sticks a flag on a concept that you already know: a grapefruit. When we tell you that a pomelo is
like
a grapefruit, you callup a mental image of a grapefruit. Then we tell you what to change about it: It’s “supersized.” Your visualized grapefruit grows accordingly.
We’ve made it easier for you to learn a new concept by tying it to a concept that you already know. In this case, the concept is “grapefruit.” “Grapefruit” is a
schema
that you already have. (“Schema” is a bit of technical jargon from psychology, but it’s so useful that we think it’s worth carrying through the book.)
Psychologists define schema as a collection of generic properties of a concept or category. Schemas consist of lots of prerecorded information stored in our memories. If someone tells you that she saw a great new sports car, a picture immediately springs to mind, filled with generic properties. You know what “sports cars” are like. You picture something small and two-door, with a convertible top perhaps. If the car in your picture moves, it moves fast. Its color is almost certainly red. Similarly, your schema of “grapefruit” also contains a cluster of generic properties: yellow-pink color, tart flavor, softball-sized, and so on.
By calling up your grapefruit schema, we were able to teach you the concept of pomelo much faster than if we had mechanically listed all the attributes of a pomelo. Note, too, that it’s easier to answer the question about the blend of pomelo and orange juice. You know that grapefruit juice blends well with OJ, so the pomelo schema
inherits
this property from the grapefruit schema. (By the way, to be complete, Explanation 1 is itself full of schemas. “Citrus fruit” is a schema, “rind” is a schema, and “tangy” is a schema. Explanation 2 is easier to parse only because “grapefruit” is a higher-level schema—a schema composed of other schemas.)
By using schemas, Explanation 2 improves both our comprehension and our memory. Let’s think about the two definitions of “pomelo” in terms of the inverted pyramid structure. What’s the lead? Well, with Explanation 1 the lead is: citrus fruit. After the lead, there is no clear hierarchy; depending on what catches people’s attention, they might remember the rind info (“very thick but soft and easy topeel away”) or the color info (“light yellow to coral pink”) or the juiciness info or the taste info.
With Explanation 2, the lead is: grapefruit-like. The second paragraph is: supersized. The third paragraph
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