Etymology of Learning Curve

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Matthew. I’m calling from Somerville, Massachusetts.

Hi, Matthew.

Hi, Matthew. Welcome to the program.

Thanks a lot. It’s good to be on.

So I had a question about the phrase learning curve. It’s something, obviously, you hear people say a lot, you know, talking about a new skill or some kind of sport, and they’ll say, oh, this has a steep learning curve. And they typically mean that it’s difficult to learn. But in my view, I think, well, if the curve is steep, then with very little forward motion, you get very high. So it must be interpreted to have exactly the opposite meaning of what’s intended. And maybe it’s some of my mathematical training. I’m actually a physicist, but I think of a curve. I want to see axes. I want to know, what are you plotting it against? If the axis is time, you have a steep curve, then very quickly you rise very high. So anyway, it’s one of those phrases that I always kind of wondered maybe what was the original meaning. Where does that actually come from?

Nice question. So the question is, what am I going to plot here on the x and the y axis on this graph, right?

Yeah, right. I know. It does refer back to an actual curve. You start to see this show up in literature related to education more than 100 years ago.

Really? The answer is important because you’ve got to get these exactly right. On the bottom of the axis, you would plot performance. That is, how well you do with this particular skill. So across the horizontal axis. And on the vertical, you plot practice. How much effort or how much repeated exposure you need to learning this skill in order to improve. And then you could see a steep learning curve would actually be accurate because your performance, you would only move a little bit to the right, and yet your graph line would be very steep for all the practice that you put in.

Interesting.

Okay. So you can write this out as I’m talking about it, right? Just put the performance horizontal and the practice vertical and then draw a steep line in it. It makes perfect sense.

Okay, practice versus performance. Very interesting. In my head, I always had it reversed, right, where the horizontal axis would be practice or time or something indicating your effort, and the vertical would be, you know, your skill level rising. So that’s, yeah, reversing it then makes perfect sense.

Well, I guess my question for you, in physics, do you tend to put the time on one axis over another?

Well, time is always horizontal.

Okay.

Or I shouldn’t say always, but very often.

Okay, very good. And I guess the other kind of metaphor that I have in my head when I hear the phrase is thinking of curve as thoroughly like a mountain that I’m climbing.

-huh. Right? The goal is to get high. That would be the performance, if you will.

I see. And so, again, then that would be the reverse of the way you’ve described it.

Yeah, many ways to interpret a graph, and on such subjects, theses are built. Matthew, I hope we helped. I assume that your learning curve is rather steep, right? But lots of practice, and you’ll get that solved, right?

We’re definitely hoping for performance, yeah. But a lot of practice involved.

Matthew, good luck.

All right.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

You have a question from your line of work? Call us, 877-929-9673, or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.