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Spaced repetition

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Re: Spaced repetition

#21

Post by xamuel »

hacker_9 wrote: post #3

I used this at work; while waiting for builds to complete I would use Anki [0] to learn all the names and locations of the countries. It worked pretty well, but it isn't a silver bullet. I retained maybe 50% of the information. [0] http://ankisrs.net/

>I retained

You're doing it wrong. You're supposed to continue using the deck, indefinitely or until you're okay with losing it all.

When a deck's life is measured in years, most cards' appearance frequency also become measured in years.

Re: Spaced repetition

#22

Post by jodrellblank »

Afforess wrote: post #2

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not rec…

And then what?

You remember everything about your life - for what benefit/purpose/reason? Even if we could remember everything we don't have the time, attention, or brainpower to dutifully filter and process three hundred million seconds (~10-20 years) of memories before making a decision, every decision.

You write down all your interesting thoughts and ideas - for who, for what? Other people have already a lifetime of thoughts themselves and more they wish they could think.

Is it almost more interesting to forget, and then you can re-experience things anew and not get bored of 'seen that, done that, been there'?

I wonder if one meaningful way forward is artificial brains/compute engines (probably required to be sentient AI - but maybe not?) which can combine and work on the thoughts and scale of thousands, then millions, of people.

Re: Spaced repetition

#23

Post by michael_nielsen »

jessriedel wrote: post #18
cerrelio wrote: post #5

This is the subject I tackled in grad school. It was super interesting, because many people still believe that memorizing stuff is best if you cram for an extended period of time. Showing them that just a few minutes of review at properly spaced intervals leads to better memorization floored most of the participants. My particular research was the quantify the effects of the variance in follow-up exposure times. I di…

The existence of spaced repetition also shows how dysfunctional educational systems (both public and private) are at making evidence-based improvements. If a method with such a clear overwhelming advantage at the stated goal isn't incorporated by schools, what hope is there that they'll make improvements where the evidence is hazier?

One of the most cited papers in the area is Frank Dempster's paper about the failure of educational systems to adopt spaced repetition: http://andrewvs.blogs.com/usu/files/the_spacing_effect.pdf Although the paper was was written almost 30 years, little has changed.

Re: Spaced repetition

#24

Post by yermierc »

Afforess wrote: post #2

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not rec…

I can completely relate to that frustration. I came from an engineering background before I went to medical school and I struggled a lot with the different styles of learning (applied principles at MIT vs. knowledge acquisition in med school). The biggest mistake you can make is think that your ability to remember is just an innate ability instead of a skill that can be cultivated.

The problem with spaced repetition software is that "SR" is just one of many known cognitive principles to aid in learning and memory. The encoding process is just as, if not more important than, the review process. I highly encourage looking into interleaving vs blocking, overlearning, learning vs. performance, retrieval-induced forgetting, contextual variability, and the (pre)testing effect. Learning how to incorporate these into your existing study process could really help you out.

This is where great existing software (e.g. Anki) falls flat for many people. If you're interested in seeing an alternative approach you can check out my company's platform Memorang (https://www.memorangapp.com). We recently raised a $500K seed round and are working on some really interesting problems around learning and memory, including a new type of spaced repetition that deviates significantly from the deterministic algorithms like supermemo3/Anki. Probably even more interesting, in addition to building apps for students we're also implementing a platform for developers and education entrepreneurs to monetize their efforts.

Although we're still fairly new we finished second to duolingo at the international reimagine education awards last week. Check out Memorang (web/Android) and let us know what you think (or come join us as a dev --> founders@memorangapp.com).

Re: Spaced repetition

#25

Post by forgotpwagain »

swsieber wrote: post #14
cpchen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are techniques with better payoff and retention. Check the memory systems advocated by David Roth or Harry Lorayne, or the locus method ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci )

Read also: Moonwalking with Einstein

Seconding this recommendation -- this book was a really fun (and fast!) read and was really eye-opening about how real memory tricks work and started to get me thinking about the utility of having vast amounts of information memorized.

Re: Spaced repetition

#26

Post by briandarvell »

I do something a little different but only because it's simpler and doesn't really require any specific programs to use. I dump all my journals, diary entries, notes, thoughts, trivia and miscellaneous things I would like to remember into a giant text file. Then a few times a week or whenever I feel like it I ask the web to give me a random # (numbergenerator.org) and that's the line I go to in the text file and read from there. Sometimes I also just browse around the file at random and read away as well. I don't have any statistics on my retention rate of course but generally I think it helps me recall things better and amongst my family and friends people occasionally comment on my good memory and it could be this method is a part of the reason for that. I think in principle the concept is very similar to the spaced repetition method, perhaps just a bit more unstructured.

Re: Spaced repetition

#27

Post by summarite »

adjwilli wrote: post #9
laurieg wrote: post #4

Spaced repetition is a wonderful tool. I came across it when I started learning languages and have over 5000 cards in my largest Anki deck for words and phrases. A lot of thought is put into how to use a learners time most effectively. The algorithm designers seem to want to optimize their software so that a student only sees a card they are likely to be on the verge of forgetting. Because of this, uses often fail wh…

Agreed. It doesn't matter how efficient the algorithm is if people get bored and stop using it. At Polly Lingual ( https://pollylingu.al ) we tried to tune our space-repitition flashcards for this. We aimed for small lessons that move more quickly, with optional follow up for difficult items. For casual learners this doesn't deter them, and for advanced students, they can still go back and see where they need improve…

Fascinating, how come I never heard of your site? Is it fairly young? It looks interesting and a big selection of languages (I'm looking at Arabic).

But i just wanted to comment to mention that i like the pricing model - it seems small enough to be painless and still like a real price. Will definitely try it out.

Re: Spaced repetition

#28

Post by jurassic »

I am a big believer in the effectiveness of SRS for getting a basic foothold in a new language or subject, but I stopped adding cards to my Anki decks after awhile because the effort needed to create high quality cards is too high. Studying is a breeze with SRS, but inputting and formatting study material into a computer takes too much time, especially if you want to include images or other context. SRS works best with small atomic units of knowledge that stand on their own without context.

I know of no better way of bootstrapping those first 2000 words of vocabulary in a language, but beyond that I think you're much better off using extensive reading of easy texts to build on your language foundation.

Re: Spaced repetition

#29

Post by summarite »

skybrian wrote: post #16

I've dabbled with this and I find the hardest part is deciding what's important enough to memorize. Most rarely needed facts can be looked up as needed. Commonly used information will get enough practice naturally without spaced repetition. You have to decide what's important even though you don't practice it naturally. The obvious exception is learning a language. And if you're in school then this is decided for you…

There is an amazing slightly older longform article on the creator of supermemo (the original spaced repetition software, although the concept of course comes from a German psychology pioneer of a few centuries ago (Helmholtz i think?)). The guy throws his whole life in the software, eg every news article, email, ... Is just processed with cloze scripts (= "fill the [...]") And his aim is to remember everything. The supermemo site also has a lot of fascinating articles written by the guy, really worth looking at if the topic interests you.

Re: Spaced repetition

#30

Post by summarite »

hf wrote: post #6

I wrote a program I fancifully called 'Human Unit Tests' to aid me in my studies (learning a diverse set of constants for biophysics). I can very much attest to the effectiveness of spaced repetition. But, /boy/, do you need to stay on the ball. You can't really afford a cavalier, let's-see attitude with this (given any non-trivial amount of items-to-be-memorized). The review process needs to be as much part of a dai…

Can you expand a bit on the coordinate terms issue? My impression would be that comes rather from the encoding rather than recall?
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