## Study Process

Learn using methods that promote Maximum Neural Exposure and Connectivity.

Success is when you can explain concepts in your own words and can apply in real world contexts.

You know it when you can teach it. You know it when you can use it.

Do brief overviews of entire material. Look at each concept and try to remember or gain a general feel for what it’s about and how it relates to what you’re doing. (Priming, Prior Knowledge)

Take a couple minutes and think about how it all comes together, what the material means to you, why it is important and how you would use it. Natural inquisitive questions arise as the material settles and you attempt to understand the material and relate it to your own frame of reference. When you have 4 or 5 good questions regarding the material then move on. (Coherence Time Chunks, Brain Resting, Meaning Making)

Review material again to find answers to your inquisitive questions.  Explore other sources of material to compare, search for missing information pieces, and discover related topics, situations, examples and anecdotes. Review material again with all of this information and your inquisitive questions in mind. (Revising, Max Neural Connectivity)

Write out or diagram your personal understanding of the concept once you’ve figured it out. These can be used for review and when piecing together future concepts. (Meaning Making)

Focus on one concept and go into granular detail. Do a brief overview of entire process. Derive understanding and formulas using material from several sources (Max Neural Connectivity). Practice problems by hand and with computer to test and confirm your understanding of the concepts. Do not blindly do a bunch of practice problems!
Keep track of fundamental concepts and formulas needed to fully understand or derive current concept (like algebra or calculus methods you may be fuzzy on). Try to apply concept methods to other problems. (Rote Repetition, Revising, Model Building)

Take a couple minutes and think about how it all comes together. Natural questions will start to arise as the knowledge settles. (Coherence Time Chunks, Brain Resting, Meaning Making)

Focus on one of the fundamental concepts that your fuzzy on. Do brief overview of entire process. Derive understanding and formulas using material from several different sources.Practice problems by hand and with computer to test and confirm your understanding of the concepts. Do not blindly do a bunch of practice problems! Try to apply concept methods to other problems. (Rote Repetition, Revising, Model Building)

Take a couple minutes and think about how it all comes together. Natural questions will start to arise as the knowledge settles. (Coherence Time Chunks, Brain Resting, Meaning Making)

Choose another concept and repeat!

You’ve reached success with a particular concept when…
– You think about it and an instant recollection of the concept comes to you, along with it’s context, how it’s used, particular abnormalities, and related concepts.
– You feel comfortable explaining the concept and process to someone else.
– You can take a real world situation and derive an answer using the concept

The biggest keys are….
– Skimming and Priming a lot to get general overall working knowledge of concepts.
– Producing questions based off the general knowledge that you then try to answer by focusing on material in depth.
– Connect, relate, and compare all new concepts to old and/or related concepts.
– Physically writing or typing your personal understanding of a concept once you’ve figure out it. These are good for review and piecing together future concepts.
– Doing it this way relates the entire context of the concepts in mind while you’re learning which makes it stick 10 times faster than traditional reading and repetition.
– Doing it this way is also much more fun and motivating bcs you get to fully understand the topics you’re studying early in the game and are more engaged throughout the entire learning process.

Sources:
*Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen
*Your Brain at Work by David Rock

## Using JSON in R

First tried RJSONIO with an online tutorial,”Using R to download and parse JSON: an example using data from an open data portal“, but kept getting a connection error…

> library(RJSONIO)
> foodMarketsRaw<-fromJSON("https://data.ny.gov/api/views/9a8c-vfzj/rows.json?accessType=DOWNLOAD") Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection >
> foodMarketsRaw<-fromJSON("https://data.ny.gov/api/views/9a8c-vfzj/rows.json?accessType=DOWNLOAD") Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection > foodMarketsRaw<-fromJSON("retail_food_markets.json")
Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection


… so I tried jsonlite.

First I tried to install jsonlite with …

> install.packages("jsonlite")


… which worked, but when i tried to use it i got a curl error….

> library(jsonlite)
Error: Required package curl not found. Please run: install.packages('curl')

… which is probably why my initial RJSONIO attempted failed. So next I try to install curl, but get a compilation error….

> install.packages('curl')
File curl.h not found. Make sure the curl development library is installed, e.g. libcurl4-openssl-dev (deb) or libcurl-devel (rpm).
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘curl’


Looks like I need the curl development package installed on my linux os. I have CentOS so search for the libcurl packages and install them with….

# yum list libcurl*
# yum install libcurl-devel


Now I try to run my jsonlite example again and it works like a charm….

> library(curl)
> library(jsonlite)