Mind map

This article is about the visual diagram. For the geographical concept, see Mental mapping.
A mind map about the sport of tennis

A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. A mind map is hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole.[1] It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those.

Mind maps can be drawn by hand, either as "rough notes" during a lecture, meeting or planning session, for example, or as higher quality pictures when more time is available. Mind maps are considered to be a type of spider diagram.[2] A similar concept in the 1970s was "idea sun bursting".[3]

Origins

Although the term "mind map" was first popularized by British popular psychology author and television personality Tony Buzan, the use of diagrams that visually "map" information using branching and radial maps traces back centuries. These pictorial methods record knowledge and model systems, and have a long history in learning, brainstorming, memory, visual thinking, and problem solving by educators, engineers, psychologists, and others. Some of the earliest examples of such graphical records were developed by Porphyry of Tyros, a noted thinker of the 3rd century, as he graphically visualized the concept categories of Aristotle. Philosopher Ramon Llull (1235–1315) also used such techniques.

The semantic network was developed in the late 1950s as a theory to understand human learning and developed further by Allan M. Collins and M. Ross Quillian during the early 1960s. Mind maps are similar in radial structure to concept maps, developed by learning experts in the 1970s, but differ in that the former are simplified by focusing around a single central key concept.

Popularisation of the term "mind map"

Buzan's specific approach, and the introduction of the term "mind map" arose during a 1974 BBC TV series he hosted, called Use Your Head.[4][5] In this show, and companion book series, Buzan promoted his conception of radial tree, diagramming key words in a colorful, radiant, tree-like structure.[6]

Buzan says the idea was inspired by Alfred Korzybski's general semantics as popularized in science fiction novels, such as those of Robert A. Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt. He argues that while "traditional" outlines force readers to scan left to right and top to bottom, readers actually tend to scan the entire page in a non-linear fashion. Buzan's treatment also uses then-popular assumptions about the functions of cerebral hemispheres in order to explain the claimed increased effectiveness of mind mapping over other forms of note making.

Mind map guidelines

Buzan suggests the following guidelines for creating mind maps:

  1. Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.
  2. Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.
  3. Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters.
  4. Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.
  5. The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The lines become thinner as they radiate out from the center.
  6. Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.
  7. Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also for encoding or grouping.
  8. Develop your own personal style of mind mapping.
  9. Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.
  10. Keep the mind map clear by using radial hierarchy or outlines to embrace your branches.

Uses

Rough mindmap notes taken during a course session

As with other diagramming tools, mind maps can be used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying[7] and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.

Mind maps have many applications in personal, family, educational, and business situations, including notetaking, brainstorming (wherein ideas are inserted into the map radially around the center node, without the implicit prioritization that comes from hierarchy or sequential arrangements, and wherein grouping and organizing is reserved for later stages), summarizing, as a mnemonic technique, or to sort out a complicated idea. Mind maps are also promoted as a way to collaborate in color pen creativity sessions.

In addition to these direct use cases, data retrieved from mind maps can be used to enhance several other applications; for instance expert search systems, search engines and search and tag query recommender.[8] To do so, mind maps can be analysed with classic methods of information retrieval to classify a mind map's author or documents that are linked from within the mind map.[8]

Differences from other visualizations

Research

Effectiveness - Cunningham (2005) conducted a user study in which 80% of the students thought "mindmapping helped them understand concepts and ideas in science".[9] Other studies also report positive effects through the use of mind maps.[10][11] Farrand, Hussain, and Hennessy (2002) found that spider diagrams (similar to concept maps) had limited, but significant, impact on memory recall in undergraduate students (a 10% increase over baseline for a 600-word text only) as compared to preferred study methods (a 6% increase over baseline).[12] This improvement was only robust after a week for those in the diagram group and there was a significant decrease in motivation compared to the subjects' preferred methods of note taking. A meta study about concept mapping concluded that concept mapping is more effective than "reading text passages, attending lectures, and participating in class discussions".[13] The same study also concluded that concept mapping is slightly more effective "than other constructive activities such as writing summaries and outlines". In addition, they concluded that low-ability students may benefit more from mind mapping than high-ability students.

Features of Mind Maps - Beel & Langer (2011) conducted a comprehensive analysis of the content of mind maps.[14] They analysed 19,379 mind maps from 11,179 users of the mind mapping applications SciPlore MindMapping (now Docear) and MindMeister. Results include that average users create only a few mind maps (mean=2.7), average mind maps are rather small (31 nodes) with each node containing about 3 words (median). However, there were exceptions. One user created more than 200 mind maps, the largest mind map consisted of more than 50,000 nodes and the largest node contained ~7500 words. The study also showed that between different mind mapping applications (Docear vs MindMeister) significant differences exist related to how users create mind maps.

Automatic Creating of Mind Maps - There have been some attempts to create mind maps automatically. Brucks & Schommer created mind maps automatically from full-text streams.[15] Rothenberger et al. extracted the main story of a text and presented it as mind map.[16] And there is a patent about automatically creating sub-topics in mind maps.[17]

Pen and Paper vs Computer - There are two studies that analyze whether electronic mind mapping or pen based mind mapping is more effective.[18][19]

Tools

Mind-mapping software can be used to organize large amounts of information, combining spatial organization, dynamic hierarchical structuring and node folding. Software packages can extend the concept of mind-mapping by allowing individuals to map more than thoughts and ideas with information on their computers and the Internet, like spreadsheets, documents, Internet sites and images.[20] It has been suggested that mind-mapping can improve learning/study efficiency up to 15% over conventional note-taking.[21]

See also

Related diagrams

References

  1. ↑ Carolyn H. Hopper, Practicing College Learning Strategies, 7th Edition, ISBN 9781305109599, Ch. 7
  2. ↑ "Mind Map noun - definition in the British English Dictionary & Thesaurus - Cambridge Dictionaries Online". Dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 2013-07-10.
  3. ↑ "Who invented mind mapping". Mind-mapping.org. Retrieved 2013-07-10.
  4. ↑ "Roots of visual mapping - The mind-mapping.org Blog". Mind-mapping.org. 2004-05-23. Retrieved 2013-07-10.
  5. ↑ Buzan, Tony 1974. Use your head. London: BBC Books.
  6. ↑ Buzan claims mind mapping his invention in interview. KnowledgeBoard retrieved Jan. 2010.
  7. ↑ 'Mind maps as active learning tools', by Willis, CL. Journal of computing sciences in colleges. ISSN 1937-4771. 2006. Volume: 21 Issue: 4
  8. 1 2 Beel, Jöran; Gipp, Bela; Stiller, Jan-Olaf (2009). "Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing (CollaborateCom'09)". Washington: IEEE. --> |contribution= ignored (help)
  9. ↑ {G}lennis {E}dge {C}unningham (2005). Mindmapping: Its Effects on Student Achievement in High School Biology (Ph.D.). The University of Texas at Austin.
  10. ↑ {B}rian {H}olland, {L}ynda {H}olland, {J}enny {D}avies (2004). "An investigation into the concept of mind mapping and the use of mind mapping software to support and improve student academic performance".
  11. ↑ D'Antoni, A.V., Zipp, G.P. (2006). "Applications of the Mind Map Learning Technique in Chiropractic Education: A Pilot Study and Literature".
  12. ↑ Farrand, P.; Hussain, F.; Hennessy, E. (2002). "The efficacy of the mind map study technique". Medical Education. 36 (5): 426–431. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2923.2002.01205.x. PMID 12028392. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
  13. ↑ {N}esbit, {J}.{C}., {A}desope, {O}.{O}. (2006). "Learning with concept and knowledge maps: A meta-analysis". Review of Educational Research. Sage Publications. 76 (3): 413. doi:10.3102/00346543076003413.
  14. ↑ {J}oeran {B}eel, {S}tefan {L}anger (2011). "An Exploratory Analysis of Mind Maps". Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering (DocEng'11) (PDF). ACM. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
  15. ↑ {C}laudine {B}rucks, {C}hristoph {S}chommer (2008). "Assembling Actor-based Mind-Maps from Text Stream". CoRR. abs/0810.4616.
  16. ↑ Rothenberger, T, Oez, S, Tahirovic, E, Schommer, Christoph (2008). "Figuring out Actors in Text Streams: Using Collocations to establish Incremental Mind-maps". arXiv:0803.2856Freely accessible.
  17. ↑ {R}obert {P}lotkin (2009). "Software tool for creating outlines and mind maps that generates subtopics automatically". USPTO Application: 20090119584.
  18. ↑ {M}ahler, {T}., {W}eber, {M}. (2009). "Dimian-Direct Manipulation and Interaction in Pen Based Mind Mapping". Proceedings of the 17th World Congress on Ergonomics, IEA 2009.
  19. ↑ {S}hih, {P}.{C}., {N}guyen, {D}.{H}., {H}irano, {S}.{H}. and {R}edmiles, {D}.{F}., {H}ayes, {G}.{R}. (2009). "Groupmind: supporting idea generation through a collaborative mind-mapping tool": 139–148.
  20. ↑ Santos, Devin (15 February 2013). "Top 10 Totally Free Mind Mapping Software Tools". IMDevin. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  21. ↑ Farrand, Paul; Hussain, Fearzana; Hennessy, Enid (May 2002). "The efficacy of the 'mind map' study technique". Medical Education. 36 (5): 426–431. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2923.2002.01205.x. PMID 12028392.

Further reading

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