The learning curve effect

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dimpy.handa

Dimpy Handa
The learning curve effect states that the more often a task is performed, the less time will be required on each iteration. This relationship was first quantified in 1925 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in America, where it was determined that every time aircraft production doubled, the required labour time decreased by 10 to 15 percent. Subsequent empirical studies from other industries have obtained different values ranging from only a couple of percent up to 30 percent, but in most cases it is a constant percentage: It did not vary at different scales of operation.
 
A learning curve is a graphical representation of the changing rate of learning (in the average person) for a given activity or tool. Typically, the increase in retention of information is sharpest after the initial attempts, and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each repetition.

The learning curve can also represent at a glance the initial difficulty of learning something and, to an extent, how much there is to learn after initial familiarity. For example, the Windows program Notepad is extremely simple to learn, but offers little after this. On the other extreme is the UNIX terminal editor Vim, which is difficult to learn, but offers a wide array of features to master after the user has figured out how to work it. It is possible for something to be easy to learn, but difficult to master or hard to learn with little beyond this.
 
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