# The Pyramid Principle ### Biggest Takeaways ### Directives #### Chapter 1 * The mind automatically sorts information into distinctive pyramidal groupings in order to comprehend it. Essentially the mind sees any sequence of things that occur together as belonging together. The mind in turn sets about imposing a logical pattern on them. * Any grouping of ideas is easier to comprehend if it arrives presorted. * Humans tend to think *hierarchically*. * We can define the problem of communicating as follows: We want other people to 'see' what we are trying to share in the same way that we 'see' it. * The most important component of clear writing is: **Controlling the sequence in which you present your ideas**. * > The clearest sequence is always to give the summarizing idea before you give the individual ideas being summarized. * In writing we move between different levels of **[abstraction](Abstraction%20(Computer%20Science).md)**. This means summarizing a group of low levels details and exhibits with a higher level take away. For instance, if I were to write out four ways (with great detail) in which high dimensional spaces are challenging, I could then move up a level of abstraction and summarize those lower level exhibits by simply saying "and hence higher dimensional spaces are challenging". * We want to form pyramidal groups. These groups must obey the following rules: * Ideas at any level in the pyramid must always be summaries of the ideas grouped below them. * Ideas in each grouping must always be the same kind of idea. * Ideas in each grouping must be logically ordered. * So, another key to clear writing is: **Slot your ideas into this pyramidal form and test them against the rules before you begin to write.** #### Chapter 2 - Substructures within the Pyramid > The classic pattern of story telling - Situation, Complication, Question, and Answer - permits you to make sure that you and the reader are 'standing in the same place' before you take him by the hand and lead him through your thinking. > The introduction presents a story to the reader that sets forth the *situation* within which a *complication* developed that raised the *question* to which your document will now give the *answer*. > Once you state the answer it will raise a new point in your readers mind that you will answer in the document. #### Chapter 4 - Introduction Follow the general format of: 1. **Situation** 2. **Complication** 3. **Solution** --- * Tags: #writing #critical-thinking *