Full Circle Associates

I love seeing people dig into "common wisdom" that is often data misused and misapplied. I'm not a data queen, so I need the critical thinking skills of colleagues. Here is a good one on Work-Learning Research:

"People remember 10%, 20%...Oh Really?

We at Work-Learning Research are always curious about how research is used in the learning-and-performance field. We've seen the following graph (in one form or another) in many presentations and documents, and because we wanted to learn more, we did some research. What we discovered scared us, and reflects poorly on our field. Scroll down to learn more."

This is similar to the mythology around verbal and non verbal communication. I blogged about this -- how the original data in a small study on non verbals in communication were taken out of the initial context (dispute). This is not to diss the importance of non verbals, but to put the data in correct context so we can use it usefully, not as another myth that propagates our own habits.

A few more citations:
Let’s Dump the 55%, 38%, 7% Rule* by Herb Oestreich

LINGUIST List 12.1332
Content"/Contributions of Different Modalities


[Via Shawn at Anecdote]