Visualization As Learning Aid

The ability to visualize something is a massive aid to learning and understanding said thing.

Simple visualizations can thus be used to 'understand' or represent the truth in an accessible way.

Not to be underestimated.

I wonder how this links in with how far one can take an analogy.

Are there any dangers with using VisualizationAsLearningAid?

Examples:

A teacher of mine claims (and presumably he's right) that what he teaches isn't actually true; it is 'merely' a series of made up images which can easily be understood, thus representing the truth more easily. -- MatthewTheobalds
Flow diagrams.
Something heard in a research meeting: Statistics are just a quantitative means to convince you that your qualitative assessment of results is valid. You need to visualize data to get that qualitative assessment.

I would say that flow diagrams (I assume the author means flow charts, rather than data-flow diagrams) are a counter example. No-one uses flow charts to describe algorithms any more, because pseudocode is more descriptive and easier to follow. On the other hand, indentation in (pseudo)code is an example of visualization as a learning aid in structured text.

When it comes to writing code with arrays, or with lots of pointers (e.g. IhadToWriteMyOwnLinkedList), diagrams are very helpful. When teaching data structures and algorithms, I often find visual pre- and post- conditions quite helpful. I sometimes encourage students to remember the pictures (as opposed to memorizing the code), and then to generate pseudocode from them. Just by looking at pictures, you can sometimes get a feel for the efficiency of the algorithm, e.g. if you see large square or triangle-like patterns in your picture (or in the trace of some code), then you could well be dealing with a quadratic algorithm. -- TobyDonaldson?

I find that well-designed diagrams help overcome the "SevenPlusOrMinusTwo" limitation: That is, they help one focus on aspects considered important. -- JeffGrigg

Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon says, in his book The Sciences of the Artificial: "...solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent." You can find great resources at Thinking With Diagrams (http://www.wideman-one.com/gw/xm/concmod/thinkwdiag.htm) and Diagrammatic Reasoning (http://morpheus.hartford.edu/~anderson/)

-- JuneKim

CategoryEducation