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Big Ideas Little Pictures

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Explaining the world one sketch at a time

Sketchplanations makes complex ideas simple with clear, insightful sketches. Explore topics from science, creativity, psychology, and beyond explained in pictures.

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Learn something new in a sketch each Sunday

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Matrix of spelling and sound showing the place of homonyms, homographs, homophones, heteronyms, synonyms and antonyms

Homonyms, homographs, homophones, heteronyms… 

This one rewards a little close attention—looking at each of the words and figuring out their different meanings or sounds. I’ve always loved heteronyms and how we can have a single word spelt the same and yet pronounced quite differently — like read — and how that clearly makes English a crazy language to learn. And, as you probably do too, I pretty much woke up at night thinking how you could sort words into groups of the same or different spelling and the same or different sounds and begin to make sense of these curious groups of words like homographs, homophones and heteronyms. Words with different spellings and different sounds generally just mean different words. There are nice buckets of other words too, like, contranyms — words that can be their own opposite. And also aptronyms (good for nominative determinism). I did think a third axis of the same or different meaning may give the complete picture but would probably just serve to confuse things. Some Greek: homo—same, hetero—different, graph—written, phone—sound Mad props to the incredible poem The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité. The poem gives an amazing number of examples of some of the craziness of the English language. Here's an excerpt from the start: Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation,    I will teach you in my verse    Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy;    Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;    Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer. Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!    Just compare heart, hear and heard,    Dies and diet, lord and word. Sword and sward, retain and Britain (Mind the latter how it's written).    Made has not the sound of bade,    Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid. Now I surely will not plague you With such words as vague and ague,    But be careful how you speak,    Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak...
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How a lip stops drips illustration: a glass of water is tipped up to pour out its contents. Close-ups of the mouth of the glass show how without a lip, water trickles down the side of the glass and that with a lip the side of the glass stays dry.

How a lip stops drips.

I’d never really thought this through before, but just a tiny lip makes a massive difference. Should be a standard feature on pretty much every saucepan.
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The Misattribution of Arousal illustration: a couple in the early stages of romance reflect on how excited they were to ride on a roller coaster together. Was the excitement due to each others' company or the roller coaster itself? Or maybe a bit of both?

The misattribution of arousal

It turns out when our body gets excited about something, we can’t reliably tell what caused the excitement. In David McRaney’s brilliant article, he explains how we routinely misattribute physiological arousal and how the most common target of misattribution is other people. It’s part of why doing challenging or exciting activities with your partner can help strengthen your relationship, and why roller coasters and scary movies can make great first dates — when we reflect on the time, we often assume that it was the person we were with that helped get our heart racing rather than the excitement of the activity. Don’t use this effect for evil.
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Recession vs Depression illustration: Recession is depicted by a man in a flat cap sitting on the edge of the pavement next to a man with a briefcase on his way to work. Depression is depicted by both men now sat on the pavement in despair.

Recession vs depression

There don’t seem to perfect definitions for either recessions or depressions. A recession is commonly defined as two successive declining quarters of GDP, but it’s not gospel. And a depression is a kind of prolonged recession for 3–4 years. So I liked Harry Truman’s clarifying explanation — US president from 1945–1953: A recession is when your neighbour loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. —Harry Truman 
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The "virtuous cycle" of Amazon and Uber illustration: closed loop flow diagrams demonstrate the effect of growth on factors like demand, price and service for Amazon and Uber.

The ‘Virtuous Cycles’ of Amazon and Uber

Networks effects can lead to massive, rapid growth especially if you manage to get a virtuous cycle turning. Amazon leveraged this model by Jeff Bezos in 2001 for mega growth. Amazon calls it a virtuous cycle (and some call it a virtuous circle). And, more recently, the Uber variation, by David Sacks explains much of Uber’s wild ride. The virtuous cycle is a form of flywheel where once it gets going it keeps on spinning. When you build a platform that leverages network effects in the right way it can enable growth way beyond what has historically been possible. Also, see Metcalfe’s Law, the business flywheel, exercise and sleep
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What is the OODA Loop example explained: military strategist John Boyd's framework for action in conflict is shown as a closed loop cycle of Orient, Decide, Act, Observe and back to the beginning. The cycle also applies to business when you reconsider the points on the cycle as Frame, Strategize, Test, Gather.

OODA Loop

The OODA loop is military strategist John Boyd’s framework for combat operations that also turns out to apply quite well to businesses and learning in general. It emphasizes a rapid cycle of Observing, Orienting, Deciding and Acting. Though it’s not so different from the classic test-learn cycle or a good design process, Boyd’s framework has a lot of nuances. I found applying it to my own life valuable because: The faster you can do this loop—in your work or in a conflict of any kind—the more solutions you can try and the quicker you will learn. If you’re competing against others, completing your OODA loop fast and acting to change the environment for them means you can disrupt their loop and force them back to the observation step before they can act. It slows them down, creates confusion and gives you an advantage. To apply the OODA loop to a business context, it can help to reconsider the points on the cycle as Frame, Strategize, Test, and Gather. I learned about it from Reid Hoffman’s excellent Masters of Scale podcast. The OODA loop features in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures My original OODA loop sketch was an animation
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