What's a learning curve and why is steep not hard?

Question

• What exactly is a learning curve?
• And why is it wrong to use the term \"steep learning curve\" for something which has high entry barriers and takes quite som

Answer 1

A "learning curve" originally had total elapsed time [or total cumulative units manufactured/learned] on the X axis and the time required to produce/learn a single unit on the y axis. Your first unit always takes more time than the 100th or 1,000th. The "steepness" of the curve depends on how fast you get good at producing/learning a thing. Learn quickly and you have a "steep" curve; slowly and you have a flat curve.

I agree that the uninformed have morphed the original meaning of the term, but to be accurate steep is easy. People get upset because those of us who paid attention to using language correctly in school rarely get to take part in this type of evolution.

Answer 2

I've generally understood it to have more to do with the amount of time allotted to learning, and what you have to learn in that period of time. If you have only a short amount of time in which to learn something, your learning curve is going to be much steeper than if you had a longer amount of time to learn the same amount of material. So a steep learning curve IS difficult because it means you're trying to cram six months worth of learning into three weeks, or whatever.

More material in the same amount of time would produce the same curve.

Answer 3

Level of difficulty is not a factor. A learning curve depicts the length of time to acquire a proficient skill set or high level of comprehension. The description will vary based on the test subject that the curve is applied to. While one can certainly say that the learning curve for acquiring proficiency of an application such as MS Notepad would be steep, another application for the curve would be the length of time individual test subject take to acquire such proficiency. The learning curve for acquiring proficiency of MS Notepad is generally steep, but it may be steeper for Mary than it is for John.

I think the key is to first understand what the curve is being applied to

Answer 4

It's a battle of intuitiveness. On one hand, you've got "steep=hard to climb" association, on the other hand you have "time on the horizontal axis" convention (but "proficiency on the horizontal axis" isn't "wrong", just "less popular"). So, IMHO it's not a matter of "right" vs "wrong" but rather "intuitive" vs "more intuitive".

I think that "steep=hard to climb" will win, because it appeals to anyone who at any point in their life has climbed a stair, as opposed to the x-y curve which even people trained in mathematics sometimes mix up.

Answer 5

It's a curve of time versus proficiency.

Steep for hard is wrong because it'd mean that you get very proficient in very little time

proficiency
  |   __
  |  |
  |  |    Proficient in little time (steep = easy)
  |  |
  |_/____________
       time

proficiency
  |
  |       Proficient in lots of time (gentle = hard)
  |            __             
  |           /
  |__________/___
       time

Answer 6

There are a few possible interpretation of "learning curve", but a fairly natural one would be "time elapsed" on the X axis and "knowledge gained" on the Y axis. A steep curve, in that mapping, would imply that you gain a lot of knowledge, fast.

The only interpretation I can think of where "steep" is the same as "hard" is where you map "knowledge gained" on the X axis and "effort expended" on the Y axis and that is not a very natural mapping.