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Spaced repetition

gwern.net

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Re: Spaced repetition

#111

Post by summarite »

pitt1980 wrote: post #99
summarite wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/ pretty sure that's the article you're referencing

exactly, thank you!

Re: Spaced repetition

#112

Post by summarite »

kendallpark wrote: post #64
summarite wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting thoughts and my experience is very much the same! One question: do you still remember the chemical path today (vs other similar items)? My experience with loci is very positive but i agree it's time intensive. From what I've read practice makes it quicker, but it is actually this time spent and the deeper processing and linking with other information that occurs when you use loci or most other mnemon…

I don't remember much of it. I think it's because the PAO system was too complex. I can remember some of the images, but I can't remember what they stood for. I have been able to recall some abstract things (like where other pathways like glycogen storage intersect with glycolysis). What have you used loci for? I was thinking I might have better luck using loci for pharm stuff. But Sketchy Pharm exists, so why spend…

Shopping lists and to do's mostly, but the to do's got unattainable as they change frequently

Re: Spaced repetition

#113

Post by Qwertystop »

gerlv wrote: post #92

I've tried using Anki but found it too confusing. Most features are overkill for what I needed, plus I always forgot to revise. Earlier this year I build a side project to tackle this problem. I've added email notifications, made interface really simple. Only left what it is - spaced repetition app - Endue ( https://endue.me/ ). After a month of using it, I actually implemented an add-on - Telegram bot, EndueBot ( ht…

Looks interesting, might give it a try if I can put together the spare time to start learning a language.

Re: Spaced repetition

#114

Post by Rzor »

ionforce wrote: post #103
ukoki wrote: post #17

Spaced repetition flashcard apps are the "Smoke on the Water" of developer side-projects. Here's my attempt: http://cardflashapp.com

> the "Smoke on the Water" of developer side-projects What do you mean by this?

That is popular among guitar players to start with "Smoke on the Water" as an easy song to learn basic principles.

Re: Spaced repetition

#115

Post by JoshMnem »

cpchen wrote: post #13
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…

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 )

Also http://artofmemory.com/ for 5,000+ pages of free content about memorization techniques.

Re: Spaced repetition

#116

Post by laichzeit0 »

summarite wrote: post #105
laichzeit0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish it could import Supermemo knowledge (with history). Simply can't afford switching to a new tool at this point (7 year Supermemo user with thousands of knowledge items).

If i may ask: how do you feel supermemo aided you? How regularly/much do you use it? What items do you store and what card models have you come to prefer (cloze, q-a, ...?) How has this impacted your life? I have seen some kind of supermemo import for anki, not sure if it's maintained. Possibly it was just a script someone created - sorry can't find it right now.

I use it to memorize Latin (and some Greek) vocabulary. What I use mostly is Q-A. Typically it looks like this:

Q. lat. adj. black (shiny)

A. niger, -a, -um

And the other way:

Q. niger, -a, -um

A. black (shiny)

So when I enter the knowledge, I write in a .txt file the first form, and the script I run generates the second. (I read on Supermemo's website it's good to test the reverse case too, so by default I do this for all knowledge items). Over time I found it was useful to prefix vocabulary with the language (lat.) because you'll typically have the same words in another language (grk.) and if it's an adjective or adverb to append (adj./adv.) after the language prefix (I wanted a single database). For verbs I found it's sufficient to write the English part as the infinite to .. (e.g. Q. lat. to kill, A. neco (1). I will occasionally write the word with macrons in brackets after the word if it's weird, e.g.

Q. lat. adv. daily

A. cotidie (cotIdiE)

I wanted to separate the two because real Latin literature does not contain the long/short macros and I wanted to condition myself to that from the start.

I use cloze mainly for grammar.

I use Supermemo daily and it takes about 20-30 minutes to memorize what is currently ~6500 items. My daily workload is between 70-100 items and my recall is about 85%. I will admit that I'm extremely hard on myself and will only score a 5 if it's absolutely perfect.

Whatever I've looked at before of Supermemo -> Anki import did not get it right 100%. I don't want my repetition history or workload screwed around with. I also want the ability to go back to Supermemo if it doesn't work out. Unless I feel comfortable that I can switch between both systems seamlessly I'll probably never switch. I run my Supermemo on a Windows VirtualBox in Linux so it can stay that way forever.

I would probably never use Supermemo for a "live" language. It would be a waste of time, imho. For languages which are not really spoken like Attic Greek or Latin, it is indispensable.

My only real problem with Supermemo is that there is no way to access it over the Internet. The database lives in that Virtualbox Windows. It would be amazing if it had the ability to spawn a little webserver that you could do your drills from.

Re: Spaced repetition

#117

Post by zild3d »

mikekchar wrote: post #75
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 live and work in the country, by a stream. I spend endless hours watching the stream. It is absolutely filled with wildlife; from birds, to turtles, to fish. An interesting thing about watching a stream is that, at first you may be unaware that there are any fish in it at all. I find that it takes me about 2-3 minutes before I spot the first one. Then after time I see another, and another and another. Eventually I…

Certainly brings to mind Siddhartha and what he learned from watching the river.

"But of all the water's secrets, he saw today only a single one-one that struck his soul. He saw that this water flowed and flowed, it was constantly flowing, and yet it was always there; it was always eternally the same and yet new at every moment!"

Re: Spaced repetition

#118

Post by gwern »

ktRolster wrote: post #50
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 find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I've worked on this for a while. I've written several different memory programs, for helping to review and memorize things. I have some thoughts that may help you feel better: In the end, spaced repetition is not what causes people to memorize things. You can review an object over and over and over......50…

> In the end, spaced repetition is not what causes people to memorize things. You can review an object over and over and over......50 times, or a hundred times, and still not remember it.

Ebbinghaus demonstrated that spaced repetition is what causes people to memorize things, using nonsense words for exactly that purpose, to ensure that there was no possibility of any sort of 'clicking' or semantic processes. Just pure memory based on repetition either massed or spaced.

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