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A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information into a hierarchy, showing relationships among pieces of the whole.^[1] It is often based on 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 major ideas.

Mind maps can also be drawn by hand, either as "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]

Origin

Although the term "mind map" was first popularized by British popular psychology author and television personality Tony Buzan,^[3]^[4] the use of diagrams that visually "map" information using branching and radial maps traces back centuries.^[5] 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.^[5] Philosopher Ramon Llull (1235–1315) also used such techniques.^[5]

Buzan's specific approach, and the introduction of the term "mind map", started with a 1974 BBC TV series he hosted, called Use Your Head.^[6] In this show, and companion book series, Buzan promoted his conception of radial tree, diagramming key words in a colorful, radiant, tree-like structure.^[7]

Differences from other visualizations

Concept maps: Mind maps differ from concept maps in that mind maps are based on a radial hierarchy (tree structure) denoting relationships with a central concept,^[8] whereas concept maps can be more free-form, based on connections between concepts in more diverse patterns.^[9] Also, concept maps typically have text labels on the links between nodes. However, either can be part of a larger personal knowledge base system.
Modeling graphs or graphical modeling languages: There is no rigorous right or wrong with mind maps, which rely on the arbitrariness of mnemonic associations to aid people's information organization and memory. In contrast, a modeling graph such as a UML diagram structures elements using a precise standardized iconography to aid the design of systems.

Research

Effectiveness

Cunningham (2005) conducted a user study in which 80% of the students thought "mindmapping helped them understand concepts and ideas in science".^[10] Other studies also report some subjective positive effects of the use of mind maps.^[11]^[12] Positive opinions on their effectiveness, however, were much more prominent among students of art and design than in students of computer and information technology, with 62.5% vs 34% (respectively) agreeing that they were able to understand concepts better with mind mapping software.^[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).^[13] 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".^[14] The same study also concluded that concept mapping is slightly more effective "than other constructive activities such as writing summaries and outlines". However, results were inconsistent, with the authors noting "significant heterogeneity was found in most subsets". In addition, they concluded that low-ability students may benefit more from mind mapping than high-ability students.

Features

Joeran Beel and Stefan Langer conducted a comprehensive analysis of the content of mind maps.^[15] 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 three 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 ~7,500 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 creation

There have been some attempts to create mind maps automatically. Brucks & Schommer created mind maps automatically from full-text streams.^[16] Rothenberger et al. extracted the main story of a text and presented it as mind map.^[17] There is also a patent application about automatically creating sub-topics in mind maps.^[18]

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, images and videos.^[19] It has been suggested that mind-mapping can improve learning/study efficiency up to 15% over conventional note-taking.^[13]

Gallery

The following dozen examples of mind maps show the range of styles that a mind map may take, from hand-drawn to computer-generated and from mostly text to highly illustrated. Despite their stylistic differences, all of the examples share a tree structure that hierarchically connects sub-topics to a main topic.

References

^ Hopper, Carolyn H. (2007). "Mapping". Practicing College Learning Strategies (4th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 139–143. ISBN 978-0618643783. OCLC 70880063.
^ "Mind Map noun - definition in the British English Dictionary & Thesaurus - Cambridge Dictionaries Online". Dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 2013-07-10.
^ "Tony Buzan obituary". The Times: 57. 17 April 2019. With receding hair, a toothy grin and a ready sense of humour, he popularised the idea of mental literacy with mind mapping, a thinking technique that he said was inspired by methods used by Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein, as well as by Joseph D Novak's ideas of 'concept mapping'. Others thought him little more than a good salesman, exuding confidence and backing up his 'pseudoscience' with an impressive and seductive range of facts and figures.
^ Serig, Dan (October 2011). "Research review: Beyond brainstorming: the mind map as art". Teaching Artist Journal. 9 (4): 249–257. doi:10.1080/15411796.2011.604627. S2CID 219642688. Tony Buzan claims to be the inventor of mind maps. While he may have coined the term, the idea that he invented them is quite preposterous if you have ever seen reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbooks.
^ ^a ^b ^c Lima, Manuel (2014). The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 9781616892180. OCLC 854611430.
^ Buzan, Tony (1974). Use Your Head. London: BBC Books. ISBN 0563107901. OCLC 16230234.
^ "Buzan claims mind mapping his invention in interview". KnowledgeBoard. Archived from the original on 2010-02-13.
^ Lanzing, Jan (January 1998). "Concept mapping: tools for echoing the minds eye". Journal of Visual Literacy. 18 (1): 1–14 (4). doi:10.1080/23796529.1998.11674524. The difference between concept maps and mind maps is that a mind map has only one main concept, while a concept map may have several. This means that a mind map can be represented in a hierarchical tree structure.
^ Romance, Nancy R.; Vitale, Michael R. (Spring 1999). "Concept mapping as a tool for learning: broadening the framework for student-centered instruction". College Teaching. 47 (2): 74–79 (78). doi:10.1080/87567559909595789. JSTOR 27558942. Shavelson et al. (1994) identified a number of variations of the general technique presented here for developing concept maps. These include whether (1) the map is hierarchical or free-form in nature, (2) the concepts are provided with or determined by the learner, (3) the students are provided with or develop their own structure for the map, (4) there is a limit on the number of lines connecting concepts, and (5) the connecting links must result in the formation of a complete sentence between two nodes.
^ Cunningham, Glennis Edge (2005). Mindmapping: Its Effects on Student Achievement in High School Biology (Ph.D.). The University of Texas at Austin. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.399.5818. hdl:2152/2410.
^ ^a ^b Holland, Brian; Holland, Lynda; Davies, Jenny (2004). An investigation into the concept of mind mapping and the use of mind mapping software to support and improve student academic performance. University of Wolverhampton. hdl:2436/3707. ISBN 9780954211646.
^ D'Antoni, A.V.; Zipp, G.P. (2006). "Applications of the Mind Map Learning Technique in Chiropractic Education: A Pilot Study and Literature". Journal of Chiropractic Humanities. 13: 2–11. doi:10.1016/S1556-3499(13)60153-9.
^ ^a ^b 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. S2CID 29278241.
^ Nesbit, J.C.; Adesope, O.O. (2006). "Learning with concept and knowledge maps: A meta-analysis". Review of Educational Research. 76 (3). Sage Publications: 413–448. doi:10.3102/00346543076003413. S2CID 122082944.
^ Beel, Joeran; Langer, Stefan (2011). "An Exploratory Analysis of Mind Maps" (PDF). Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering (DocEng'11). ACM. pp. 81–84. ISBN 978-1-4503-0863-2.
^ Brucks, Claudine; Schommer, Christoph (2008). "Assembling Actor-based Mind-Maps from Text Stream". arXiv:0810.4616 [cs.CL].
^ Rothenberger, T; Oez, S; Tahirovic, E; Schommer, Christoph (2008). "Figuring out Actors in Text Streams: Using Collocations to establish Incremental Mind-maps". arXiv:0803.2856 [cs.CL].
^ US application 2009119584, Herbst, Steve, "Software tool for creating outlines and mind maps that generates subtopics automatically", published 2009-05-07 , since abandoned.
^ Santos, Devin (15 February 2013). "Top 10 Totally Free Mind Mapping Software Tools". IMDevin. Archived from the original on 7 August 2013. Retrieved 10 July 2013.