Notes from "How we learn"

Memory exists in the brain as a network of linked cells. These cells fire together.

To forget is to fail — If learning is the build of skills then forgetting is losing some of the things which we’ve gained
Forgetting is like a natural spam filter in our brain — It allows the brain to focus on the important things and drain the nonsense/cut out the noise.
We should not be afraid of “forgetting” — it’s a friend to learning
The forgetting filter also blocks some relevant details from coming back along with the irrelevant ones.
Retrieving any memory alters it’s accessibility and sometimes even the content
Ballard’s experiment — After a studying a poem, memory improves in the first few days without any further study and tapers off after day 4 or so. This may not be true for everything though.
For nonsense syllables, and for most lists of vocabulary words or random sentences, it’s zero: There’s no spontaneous improvement on test scores after a day or two. By contrast, reminiscence is strong for imagery, for photographs, drawings, paintings—and poetry, with its word-pictures.
The brain doesn’t hold on to nonsense/unrelated/unstructured stuff for long because it can’t make sense out of it. We remember a song better than just learning individual words.
Immediate rewards for correct answers are less effective than periodic rewards it comes to learning/remembering.
Why is recall of pictures better than recall of word lists?
Memory has 2 strengths — Storage & Retrieval

Measure of how well learned something is.
Builds up while studying and grows sharply when we use it.
E.g. Multiplication Tables — learned early in life but we use them continually throughout and hence are embedded in our brains.
Builds up with time and never decreases