Why analogies work
Context is king!
Accelerated Learning
Analogies create a framework for learning that takes a familiar concept and uses it to overlay new ideas and principles into a structure that makes sense. The English Literature Hub describes it as "a comparison between persons, places, objects or idea for the purpose of explanation."
In the world of technology, there are many layers of unique concepts and terminology that it is easy to see how newcomers get lost, perplexed or bamboozled. Even the children of the millennium who are considered 'digital natives' commonly trust that technology works without knowing how, why or what is involved. To some extent we all do that, we fly in a plane without truly knowing how it all works in detail. We trust the laws of aerodynamics and the thrust of the plane's engine is sufficient to achieve the resulting flight. We can explain a plane as an analogy to a bird, they both have wings, however, a plane cannot have muscles like a bird, so it uses engines to produce the thrust that gives it flight.
David Friedman shared an insightful idea on the Quora site that discusses analogies, who in a comment said "Analogies are a cognitive shortcut" meaning that your thinking can arrive at an understanding faster than by piecing the new information together from scratch.
Why do we use Analogies?
As people, we are innately community focused and derive pleasure from connections and purpose both physical and intellectual. Learning to use a new tool, whether a spoon as an infant, wield a wrench, master a digital device, or fly an airplane, each new skill brings a sense of satisfaction and achievement. Few of these learnings can be achieved completely independent of some form of demonstration or instruction.
Kalid Azaz explains it as "Our brains are association machines. Connections, relationships, patterns — we need meaning!". Analogies are a way to attach connection and meaning to a new set of experiences or learning opportunities.
By searching YouTube for 'how to' videos at the date this article was posted it showed about 399,000,000 results. Searching on other popular categories showed that how-to videos make up a greater volume of YouTube videos that the following popular categories... comined!
- 'Movie' (161,000,000)
- 'Cat' (surprisingly only 61,100,000)
- 'Recipe' (13,800,000)
The appetite for learning is clearly demonstrated in the extremly high number of 'how-to' videos available, as is the evidence of the desire to visualize the learning so that the learner can relate to it. When YouTube videos are not available, verbal or written analogies can bridge the gap of understanding.
The power of Repetition
Analogies employ the age-old tradition of storytelling to convey information. Cultural histories have been handed down in story and song. Ancient cultures used analogies to explain physical phenomena in terms of actions of the gods "the god of thunder was angry" to explain the booming noise of a thunderstorm. This story telling involved repetition, where the stories would live on from generation to generation with the frequent retelling. The repetition of retelling a story was part of the learning process that locked in the concepts to a new listener.
