learning curves

learning curves

Posted Nov 3, 2005 22:29 UTC (Thu) by eli (subscriber, #11265)
In reply to: learning curves by roelofs
Parent article: The return of Minix

The implied graph as used by most people does put time on the horizontal axis, but "cumulative stuff learned (before being able to accomplish anything useful)" is what goes on the vertical one.

Better:
y = "total knowledge"
x = "things you can do"

Time required to learn how to do the next thing is a function of the change in y, depending on how long it takes you to learn.

A "user friendly" system in the usual meaning would have a shallow slope starting at the origin. The problems usually occur later: either the slope gets worse later, or the line just stops too soon, when you just can't do what you need to do. It might look like y=.25x^2

An "expert friendly" system, if you will, starts out steep or even y>0, but after the initial investment of effort requires little additional effort to increase what you are able to accomplish. An example of that would be vim. It would have a graph like y=sqrt(x)+5.

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