***Posted by: Vikram Modi - March 31, 2009

One of the reasons why the geography bee can be quite challenging is because geography is so interdisciplinary. Simply learning country capitals or the definitions of physical features is not enough: as you know, there are many questions - sometimes whole rounds - about history, culture, economics, natural resources, and other topics that the average person may not associate with "elementary school geography".

However, this can actually work to your advantage. Consider the following question:

In which region of Central Asia, famous for its agricultural output, was Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, born?

What clues are we given? We know we are looking for a region (1) of Central Asia (political geography) (2) famous for its agricultural output (economics, physical geography) that was (3) home to Babur (history). You can get the answer from (3) alone, but my guess is that most Bee participants, maybe even at the national level, would not be able to do this. It would be a mistake to focus on (3) and panic, though, since you can still get the answer from (1) and (2). From (2), you can guess that a river probably runs through the region you are looking for. So now you are most likely looking for a region of Central Asia that is cut by the Amu Darya or Syr Darya. I don't know a whole lot of regions that satisfy these properties, so at this point I would just guess the Fergana Valley (just "Fergana" is also acceptable), which is in fact the correct answer.

Clearly, it is to your advantage to study a broad range of topics. History, culture, and economics questions are fair game! But the key point is that studying a wide range of topics is helpful not just because you will be able to answer a wider range of questions, but also because you increase to probability of answering a single question correctly. Why? As the above question demonstrates, broad knowledge gives you more ways of attacking a question.

The danger of studying a wide range of topics is that you can end up memorizing random facts, which means that you will (1) be less likely to remember them and (2) less likely to recognizes the clues embedded in a question. I think one of the most important things to do when studying is to always make sure you relate facts to each other. Not only do you provide context for each new piece of information, thereby making memorization easier, but you also get in the mindset of looking for many ways to answer the same question.

One way to do this is to make up stories - I often found myself making up stories in my head as I would study. For example, I might have had two countries fighting a war. In determining which cities to attack, I had to think of cities' strategic importance (physical geography), economic importance (economics), and whether there were any similar historical battles from which I could draw inspiration for my story (history, culture). As ridiculous as this might sound, it was actually my most effective studying method by far, even though I wasn't consciusly using it as a studying method.

Another good way to relate facts to each other is to read the news consistently. Events almost always involve so many dimensions that when you read a news article with substantial analysis, you will be able to see how each dimension plays off of the others. The Council on Foreign Relations is an excellent resource - sometimes, they even have interactive maps to illustrate the background behind news stories.

Useful Resources:

The Council on Foreign Relations:http://www.cfr.org/
The Economist:http://www.economist.com/
World Press Review (gives you access to newspapers around the world): http://www.worldpress.org/