Story-driven learning can help you master any subject

> So, what’s a better way to learn? Instead of beginning with Bayes' Theorem, you might start with the story of Annie Duke. She’s one of the best female poker players in the history of the game. How did she become so successful? She used probability theories, like Bayes' Theorem, to make good decisions about how to make good bets. This strategy rocketed her to the top of the poker world. In 2010, she won the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Her lifetime earnings amount to over four million dollars.

> Now, all of the sudden, I bet you’re much more interested in learning how to make decisions using statistics. You’ve wrapped all the numbers and theories around a person with a good story. You have someone worth mimicking.

No. No. No.

That's not using the story as a learning tool, that's only using the story as a teaser. Might, maybe, in some cases, make me interested in learning something that I wasn't already interested in. But if the story is boring, and I guarantee many of the teaser stories teachers would have to come up it will be boring, it makes me bored even before the real thing starts.

And such teaser stories sure as hell don't do anything to help me understand the subject matter.

> You’ll probably find a teacher lecturing about facts, figures, and formulas. We treat kids like computers. Give them rules and information, and if they’re functioning properly, they’ll process the data and spit out the right answer. Kids who struggle must have bugs in their system.

Ok. Great. I agree that rote memorization is not the learning of generally applicable knowledge . . .

> Stories are fun, engaging, exciting, and captivating

I'll give that one a very strong maybe, given recent MCU blunders and flops. There's more to stories than story, let alone learning.

> We’d all learn much better if we copied kids. Find stories of successful people

Ok. I'm here on HN, so I guess I can't argue.

> Instead of beginning with Bayes' Theorem, you might start with the story of Annie Duke.

So instead of studying probability, study gamblers?

No. Done with this now. Done, done, done.

Story-driven learning doesn't work for everybody... there are different "learning styles". There is no single accepted theory of what those are, but that there are differences can hardly be doubted.

Some people actually prefer formulas (or maybe graphs and images) to stories about people and remember them more easily.

Of course there are different ways to skin a cat, a number of ways to learn a particular subject. Yes — learning via story telling can be powerful but sometimes (not always, but sometimes), rote memorization via active recall IS necessary and the most effective way to gain deep expertise.

Polina Pompliano got me thinking about leveraging stories to capture and share knowledge inside the company. The story can help retain facts, relationships, formulas, warnings, upside, or anything relevant to doing the necessary work. What is the narrative behind the change you'd like to make? How can you get people to connect to it emotionally? It's working well on kids at school, but it doesn't end there. Most of us learn best when we can connect to the narrative.