I’ve been reading a bit about explaining ideas and concepts (including business problems) through sketching. People can write pages and pages of text to explain a problem or to point out patterns in data, when a simple sketch (or diagram) can do it faster and better.

Then I come across a video of Bobby McFerrin at a the World Science Festival, on a panel about neuroscience. What the hell is he doing there you ask? Well it appears that the panel is discussing how the Pentatonic Scale (yes I had to look that up…) seems innate, or at least somehow hard-wired in our brains. So to show his knowledge on the subject, Bobby demonstrates how people just seem to know it. They demonstration is just magic:

So coming back to my original paragraph – I think I’ll need to extend past just sketching as an explanation tool and look at physical demonstration too. Sketching and physical demonstration are something we all do as kids. But as we progress through school we stop doing this and focus instead on writing. Writing is a great skill (I love books), but why do we have to use it for everything?