Mental Model Transfer: Moving a Model Into a New Domain

1. What a model actually is

Not a picture. A map of a structure. Parts plus their relations. Invariants that never break. Queue: a line, one served at a time.

2. Transfer vs. analogy

Transfer: the structure holds. Analogy: the same words only. Same words, new relations = no. The test is structural, not lexical.

3. The four moves

1 Name the invariants. 2 Map each part's role. 3 Check the relations hold. 4 Predict, then verify.

4. The transfer test

A model must predict something new. The new domain alone could not guess. No new prediction = a mnemonic. It is not a model. Practice: borrow a cache or a queue.