You are the subject and the scientist.
An interactive tour through the science of how we really learn.
"Learning is deeper and more durable when it's effortful. Learning that's easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow."Begin the Experiment ↓
— Make It Stick
Most students rely on re-reading. Let's prove it doesn't work—on you, right now.
"A single, simple quiz after reading a text produces better learning and remembering than rereading the text."
Just read them. Don't try to memorize—just read naturally, like re-reading notes.
When learning feels harder, it's actually working better. Let's make you feel it.
"The more effort required to retrieve something, the better you learn it. In other words, the more you've forgotten about a topic, the more effective relearning will be."
Solve these simple math problems. Group A is easy (just confirm). Group B requires effort.
We forget ~70% of new information within hours. But each retrieval resets the curve.
"Practice that's spaced out, interleaved with other learning, and varied produces better mastery, longer retention, and more versatility."
Watch how memory decays—and how spaced retrieval changes everything.
Surgical residents who spaced their training over 4 weeks outperformed those who crammed it into 1 day. 16% of the crammers damaged their patients' vessels beyond repair.
The optimal review schedule for something you want to remember:
Mixing problem types feels slower but produces dramatically better results.
"Students who practiced solving problems clustered by type averaged only 20% correct on the final test, while students whose practice was interleaved averaged 63%."
Here's how the same 12 practice problems look under each approach:
Identify each shape's volume formula. They come randomly—that's the point.
You think you know more than you do. Let's prove it.
"We are poor judges of when we are learning well and when we're not. When the going is harder and slower and it doesn't feel productive, we are drawn to strategies that feel more fruitful, unaware that the gains from these strategies are often temporary."
You've seen a penny thousands of times. Rate your confidence, then answer.
Which direction does Lincoln face on a penny?
🔬 Despite thousands of exposures, most people can't accurately identify a penny. Exposure ≠ learning. This is the fluency illusion: familiarity masquerades as knowledge.
Those who know the least overestimate the most. Calibration is the antidote.
Generating answers—even wrong ones—beats passively receiving them.
"It's better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution. It's better to attempt a solution and supply the incorrect answer than not to make the attempt."
Complete these key concepts from the book. Struggling to recall is the point.
Test yourself, then check. The gap between confidence and accuracy is your blind spot.
"Testing helps calibrate our judgments of what we've learned. In virtually all areas of learning, you build better mastery when you use testing as a tool to identify and bring up your areas of weakness."
For each question, first rate your confidence, then answer.
Remember those 16 words from the beginning? Let's see how many you recall now—after doing retrieval practice on other material in between.
"Periodic practice arrests forgetting, strengthens retrieval routes, and is essential for hanging onto the knowledge you want to gain."
Don't scroll up! Type every word you remember.
Every experiment in this lab used the strategies the book recommends. You didn't just learn about them—you lived them.
You recalled words from memory instead of re-reading them.
You were tested on the words again after a delay—spacing in miniature.
You switched between different topics and problem types throughout.
The hard problems taught you more than the easy ones.
You filled in blanks and generated answers before seeing them.
You rated your confidence and then discovered the truth.
"Effortful learning changes the brain, building new connections and capability. This single fact—that our intellectual abilities are not fixed from birth but are, to a considerable degree, ours to shape—is a resounding answer to the nagging voice that too often asks us 'Why bother?'"
Based on Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III & Mark A. McDaniel