Re: OT - Learning

I have indexed quite a pile of books, so I can tell you some tricks that
indexers use to make information visible and how to exploit them to find
what you want.

The problem is that a reader wants to find something but doesn't know the
words used by the subject matter experts in that field (this happens when
readers approach a new field). So indexers often place synonyms with See
references in the index. The other thing that indexers often do is
scramble the word order of each important multi-word term. Thus, "Tuning
the Deteronic Frombotzer" becomes "Tuning, Deteronic Frombotzer",
"Deteronic Frombotzer, Tuning", and "Frombotzer, Deteronic, Tuning".

All of that means that two search strategies can reward someone
researching a new (to that person) field: First, search for a broad range
of synonyms. Second, keep your search strings short, so as to maximize the
number of matches. Once you've gotten a few successes and have discovered
some of the terms in use in the new field, you can narrow your searches
and have greater success at finding the bits you want.

That assumes that the information you seek has been indexed somewhere
visible to Google or some other search engine. Given that you are looking
for education-related terms, that's pretty likely, as educators (I used to
be one) are generally more mindful of such things than most folks.

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services
(presently consulting at Synergistic Solution Technologies)




Antsnio Mota <amsmota@xxxxxxxxx>
10/21/2005 09:35 AM
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Re:  OT - Learning






Thanks for that, i had searched the wikipedia but didn't find that!

But let me try to put my question in another way, less related to
learning and more to information searching.

When i don't find information the way i asked for it, what should i
do? How do i refraze the question? Where and how to look if i have no
clue to start with?

Are there some heuristcs that apply here?

Thanks again.

On 10/21/05, James Fuller <jim.fuller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Antsnio Mota wrote:
>
> >I'm sorry for the OT, but i've spend two days searching the list
> >archives and my personal mail archive and couldn't find what i'm
> >looking for.
> >
> >
> oddly enough I was looking for some formalisms related to learning a few
> days ago...
>
> >So can someone knows what is that theory, what's is name and author,
> >or something related to?
> >
> >
> dont know what specifically u were looking for...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_theory_%28education%29
>
> found it to be a useful starting point.
>
> gl, JF