Map
Article
Map is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 22, 2022 and June 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “how crude is the Map and how vast the Territory”; “Alpha defines 2x learning as improvements in students MAP scores - MAP Growth Speed (MGS)“. It most often appears alongside Scott, Ukraine, YouTube.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: July 22, 2022
- Last seen: June 27, 2025
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Scott (2 shared issues)
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- Ukraine (2 shared issues)
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- YouTube (2 shared issues)
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- 10,000 hour rule (1 shared issues)
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- 2 Hour Learning, Inc (1 shared issues)
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- 2-hour Learning (1 shared issues)
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- 2020 election (1 shared issues)
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- 2022 book review contest (1 shared issues)
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- 2122 (1 shared issues)
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- Afghanistan (1 shared issues)
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- Africa (1 shared issues)
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- AI (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
The flip side of that coin is that I’m much more aware of the log in my own eye. [14] It never hurt anyone to reflect on how crude is the Map and how vast the Territory. I’m continually astonished by the sheer variety of ways I manage to arrive at ‘Here Be Dragons’. It's disturbing how often I open my mouth and someone else comes out. 'Strong opinions, weakly held' used to be an appealing heuristic. Unfortunately, I keep noticing that the stronger my opinion, the more likely it is that I'm missing something.15
Inline links: 'Strong opinions, weakly held'
How high students are scoring on standardized tests that measure content understanding – “MAP Growth Speed” Lesson Clock Speed (LCS) can be measured by how many lessons the students are completing at “mastery” level and how long it takes them to complete those lessons. My 8-year old started 2nd grade content in mid-October 2025. She “mastered” all of 2nd grade by March 31st, 2025 (Reading: March 31st, Math: February 5th, Language: January 20th). She is now working her way through 3rd grade and the system estimated she will master all 3rd grade content before the end of May (Language: May 23rd, Math: May 9th, Science: May 7th). When she completes this content she will start on 4th grade material for the remainder of this year, and will start next school year part-way through that 4th grade content (assuming she doesn’t finish 4th grade over the summer). Since she missed the first 20% of the school year, we could say she is “learning” at (2.1/0.8) ~2.6x speed. But that is NOT where the 2.6x number comes from. Instead Alpha defines 2x learning as improvements in students MAP scores - MAP Growth Speed (MGS) For those who are not deep in academic terminology (I know I wasn’t), MAP stands for “Measures of Academic Progress”. MAP is a set of standardized, computer-adaptive tests built by the Northwest Evaluation Association given to millions of students across America three times per year (fall, winter and spring). The adaptive nature of the test means that, while the “starting point” of the test depends on the student's age/grade level, the test questions increase or decrease in difficulty (of both concepts and expected knowledge) as students answer questions correctly or incorrectly. This means that not only can you compare scores across students in the same grade, you can compare scores of the same student over time, and of students across different grades. A 12th grader scoring a “238” has about the same knowledge as a 5th grader scoring “238”. If that score was a MAP math test taken in the fall, the 12th grader would be at the 60th percentile for his grade and the 5th grader would be at the 97th percentile for hers – but their knowledge and current capabilities would be about equivalent to each other. Alpha has their students take the MAP tests three times per year. This testing can help the program adapt to understand if students who are “getting through the material” are actually retaining it and conceptualizing it, but it also helps measure progress. If a student is at 95th percentile in math in the fall, the MAP test will tell us if they are still at 95th percentile in the spring (or if they have advanced slower or faster than other 95th percentile students across the country). You can see all of the MAP percentile charts here for all the kids who take it across America. For our purposes let’s look at the MAP percentile scores for math tests taken in the spring for the top 50% of kids in the country: A few things worth pointing out: Everyone gets better. Whether due to education or not, the scores of any given percentile increase with each passing year