Spider diagrams: how and why they work

In his latest revision techniques blog, Ed Cooke explains why creating spider diagrams
can be a great help when it comes to exam essay writing and how to make one.
Revision techniques: creating a spider diagram offers you a bird's eye view of the subject matter at hand. Photo: Niall
McDiarmid/Alamy
By Ed Cooke
7:00AM GMT 02 Feb 2013
When it comes to exams, the problem is often not ignorance, but simply that we forget to
remember the right things at the right time.
For essay writing in particular, there's nothing like having at your disposal a bird's-eye view of the
subject matter at hand. You want to be able swiftly to look over all that could be said and pick out
the most relevant parts, while leaving plenty of mental space for the crafting of an ingenious
argument.
Spider diagrams are an excellent tool for creating an overview, and remembering it crisply. They
help distil complex topics onto a single memorable page by using a branching spatial organisation,
colour and images.
There are two fundamental reasons why spider diagrams are such a powerful tool.
The first is simple: they're straight-out memorable. Colours, pictures, and simple keywords add to
a spatial structure that invites easy exploration in memory. You never get confused between the top
left and the bottom right of a spider diagram in the way that you can get confused between different
parts of a historical epoch, for instance. The space gives us meaning.
The second is that their creation is active, and intertwined with the development of understanding.
As we force ourselves to sift, understand and summarise in order to create the diagram, we make
new connections which deepen and elaborate our understanding. And this process of making is also
enacting how we'll subsequently recall them.
So, how to create one? First, take a blank sheet of paper in portrait mode. Put the essence of your
subject in pictorial form in the middle of the page. This is the front door to your set of memories
and thoughts make it bright and visual and distinctive. We'll take the example of the French
Revolution, and make our image a guillotine.
Next, divide your overall subject into sections, and radiate a branch for each section from the
centre. Interestingly, it doesn't too much matter exactly how you slice and dice the subject, only
that you do so. Here we'll divide the branches into four phases of the revolution.
Then, let's zoom in to our branch entitled The Reign of Terror 1792-95. How to elaborate this?
Well, we next add 'twigs' for the key things we might need to know about that period: the Execution
of Louis XVI that began it, the Jacobins' Coup led by Robespierre, the Constitution of 1793, the
terror itself, and the Thermidorian reaction that followed Robespierre's death.
Borrowing from last week's blog, it's worth chucking in a pic of a thermostat on the twig of the
Thermidorian revolution, to help recall that bit.
Each of these twigs will subdivide again, with the focus on each subtopic this time. So within the
Jacobin coup, the key third-level themes may be Robespierre, his mates the sans-culottes and the
banishing of the Girondins from the National Assembly. So we'd have a 'leaf" for the these as well.
At the leaf stage, we can go further if we like with dates, further players etc.
What results from following this process on each branch and twig is a dense but accessible
overview of a complex, interconnected subject. When you're answering some question about
Robespierre, the map enables you to locate him as a key -player in the The Reign of Terror and the
Jacobin coup, and to see when he was executed, and for what reason.
By zooming in, you not only recall all the relevant information arrayed around the leaves, but relive
the thoughts and understanding that led you to put them there in the first place.
Ed Cooke is a Grand Master of Memory, and is co-founder and CEO of Memrise. He
writes a weekly blog for Telegraph Education on revision techniques:
Revision techniques: How to learn boring facts
Revision techniques: The secret to exam revision success
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