@ian
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Hi Sophie,
Love the post, its great to see some academic rigour applied to this.
I am going to challenge you however on some of your assertions (nothing personal) . I don’t think you can discount keyword mnemonics and the use of associative imagery so quickly. Whichever way one looks at the syllabus there is a vast amount to cover, attempting to learn the syllabus without structuring it in a memory efficient format means you are likely to forget most of what you have learnt pretty quickly. I completely agree with you that practice questions are essential, and I did many many of these in advance of my exam, but it still didn’t stop me forgetting the underlying equations soon after the exam.
Once I started committing the underlying content to my long term memory by structuring it in a more memory efficient format using techniques such as mnemonics and associative imagery (which can work really well for memorising mathematical concepts), then I found I had a rock solid recall of the essential content. Content which I could draw upon at any time in order to undertake questions and think about the content more deeply.
Clearly, rote learning and memorising stuff without any understanding of the content itself is not at all helpful, but using memory techniques to provide a sound foundation from which to then deepen and perfect one’s level of understanding via Self Explanation, Practice Testing and Distributed Practice seems to me to be the optimal approach.
Like most things in life, I guess, a number of things combined will usually produce the most effective results.
Love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation.
Kind Regards.
Up2Hi hairyfairy,
You make a really good point, the amount of material you need to be able to understand and be able to recall for the CFA exams is always going to be challenging no matter what method you use, after all there are circa 450 LOS’ for Level 1, and 450 images or more is still a lot to commit to ones memory.
The thing is however that the brain is amazingly efficient at remembering images, much more efficient than it is at remembering abstract concepts, just think how often you have recognised a face, but are unable to remember the accompanying name. Our evolutionary past has equipped us with a highly developed ability to recall images.
Therefore, whilst there is no getting away from the fact that there is a vast amount to remember in the CFA, it will be far easier to commit it to your memory if you are able to turn the content into relevant images rather than simply referring to the content in its written word form.
Additionally, there are a number of techniques you can employ to structure the large amount of images that you would need to remember for the syllabus. In my next blog entry I am going to explore some of these techniques and in particular illustrate what a virtual structure (A Mind Palace) could look like for the CFA syllabus.
By using techniques such as Mind Palaces, you can structure the images that you are trying to commit to memory, so you avoid becoming swamped by a massive volume of unstructured content.
Kind Regards,
Ian
