The phrase everyone gets wrong. Outside experimental psychology, where the term originated, I have never seen a correct usage. Learning curves show performance (e.g., percent correct) as a function of amount of training (e.g., number of trials). A steep learning curve means the organization, person, or animal quickly went from low to high performance — in other words, learning was fast.
The phrase is always used to mean the opposite (slow learning). An example from Economic Principals:
But experience has shown that high fixed costs, steep learning curves, access to delivery systems and expensively-maintained reputations are powerful deterrents to ambitious start-ups.
It’s routinely used correctly in industrial manufacturing, where it refers to cost reductions that result from manufacturing experience and competition. There, cost starts at a normalized 1 and declines exponentially toward an asymptotic horizontal somewhere (presumably) above zero.
The normal usage of the phrase is very closely related to the actual meaning, though. When someone says “product X has a steep learning curve”, they mean “product X requires that you go from low to high performance very quickly to use it” — it’s a product that isn’t worth using if you’re not going to learn quickly.
ah, thanks for this.
I always used it wrongly for a different reason. I use it to mean “difficult” (which would be an axis of Effort and Time).
Good to learn where I’m wrong (again)
:¬)
Achieving a steep learning curve can feel difficult, because there can be much to learn in a short time. I think you are correct to note that the term is hardly ever used to describe situations where it was easy to go from low to high performance. Intuitively, a steep hill is one that is hard to climb, so the phrase is naturally associated with situations where learning feels like quickly climbing a steep hill.