A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks.

You may have noticed  students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they  fail in school and in life. You've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in  your head.  What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you've got to have multiple models—  because if you just have one or tw... See more