Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

apps.ankiweb.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 175 posts

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#161

Post by roger_wiz »

Anki is great, but it's easy to use wrong. It can't be overstated how important it to design your flashcards well. Do it wrong and you'll quickly be frustrated and overwhelmed by the work you have to put towards memorizing the info.

The best guidelines I've found on writing flashcards are Supermemo's 20 rules: https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules. Honestly, this is a seminal work that anyone jumping into SRS or flashcards in general should read.

I also found this recent discussion about spaced repetition on HN to be very helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17706776

As far as Anki itself is concerned: Make sure to check out some of the add-ons that are out there – they can really improve your workflow and motivate you to keep on going: https://ankiweb.net/shared/addons/

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#162

Post by ColinWright »

lgessler wrote: post #56
ColinWright wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was your list of the most common ~1k words? Do you have a link?

This is an Anki deck that was made from the book I used: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1657789477 I made my own Anki deck because this deck didn't have tags by chapter, and I wanted to study only the words I'd been exposed to so far.

Thanks for that - do you know if there is a way to export the list of words without going through the full process of installing Anki? I'm interested in different people's concept of "the thousand most useful words" and would love to extract the list you've used. It seems like it would be less overall work for you to do it than for me to do it, although I realise I'm asking you to do work.

Thanks.

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#163

Post by aasasd »

roger_wiz wrote: post #157
aasasd wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a third-party web client mentioned elsewhere in this thread: https://ankimono.com/ I haven't tried it so not sure if it syncs with AnkiWeb and really works as a full-fledged client, but it sounds like a fitting solution for your stack. --- By the way, there are bluetooth remotes/joypads for one hand, e.g. Zeemote or mini gaming pads [0] — they may be more comfortable to use with Anki and the TV while exercisi…

Pretty sure that ankimono site is a knock-off. It doesn't seem to be affiliated with Anki in any way, at least.

Ah, it appears that you're right. That makes it at least a second such app leaching off the Anki name.

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#164

Post by inetsee »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #125
inetsee wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm running a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with the latest Raspbian image (Stretch dated 2018-06-27). I used apt to install Anki version 2.0.32. Starting Anki from the command line results in "Import error: no module named QtWebKit". Apparently, QtWebKit has been unmaintained for quite some time, and has been removed from the latest version of PyQt. When I get the time I'm going to load Jessie onto a spare micro-sd card and see…

Anki 2.1 was released 3 weeks ago, and is the current stable release. It depends on newer versions of QT. It might work better than the one from apt. If you really want to install the one from apt, e.g. because your favourite plugins haven't been updated to work with 2.1, then perhaps this approach will be easier than re-installing the OS: https://github.com/gnprice/anki-jessie

Thank you rahimnathwani. The procedure took a while to complete, and I'm getting some warnings, but the procedure from https://github.com/gnprice/anki-jessie worked. This should hold me until Anki version 2.1 becomes available for Raspbian stretch.

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#165

Post by wodenokoto »

aasasd wrote: post #70
wodenokoto wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another problem (with the algorithm, not Anki itself) My main gripe with the algorithm is you can't take weekends off. I used Anki a lot in College, and Mondays where terrible, due to the backlog built-up over the weekend. One could also say, one shouldn't be drinking the weekend away ...

Actually, it's mentioned several times in the docs that you shouldn't think that backlog build-up means you have to crunch―or more specifically, IMO, 'backlog' isn't a thing here at all. If you can only put in thirty minutes a day, then do it and then close the app, this doesn't change because of a missed day. The cards will be there the next day, it's not like they catch fire when you skip a session. Stressing over…

> Instead, change the limit of cards to review to the number that you can get through in the time you have.

I actually brought this up with the devs. The way Anki counts this limit is just how many draws from the stack. A better way (and much more intuitively aligned with the wording) to count this, would be to limit the size of the stack you draw from.

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#166

Post by Havoc »

lgessler wrote: post #23

I couldn't imagine learning a language without Anki. I had to learn Coptic in a month, which required memorizing the most common ~1000 words in the language. Anki made this as easy as it can be. I don't think I would have been able to meet my deadline had I been making paper flashcards or using some more informal system. The nice thing about Anki is that you can use it at any time without any overhead associated with…

>I had to learn Coptic in a month

What kind of job do you do?

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#167

Post by huylenq »

tushartyagi wrote: post #137
nextos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

org-mode has an implementation of several spaced repetition algorithms, which is what Anki is using under the hood and what was originally invented for SuperMemo. The module is called org-drill. I'm in the process of turning many knowledge aspects of my life into a personal knowledge base inside org-mode. For books I'm reading, I find it invaluable to create org-mode items. One per concept. Sometimes I don't even bot…

Since we are talking about Emacs now, there's a package[1] for Anki just like everything else in Emacs. :) This basically connects to a background server of Anki, you create a card and press C-c C-c to send it to Anki. End of the day, just sync it. I am one of those guys who try moving everything to Emacs, but personally I found Anki to be much better than org-drill just for the simple reason that I can go through th…

One of the problems with this approach (one-way sync/extract from org-mode files to Anki database) is losing out the context (imagine org file notes from a technical books). I use org-drill in combination with org-sticky-header, which show the path of headings to that particular node. Normally in Anki, this requires to add some extra descriptions or tags for this purpose. In org-mode, we get this for free.

But on the other hand, org-drill will fill your org file with scheduling and metadata drawers (I did some hacks to hide them but not able to make it work without messing the org-ellipsis).

Another drawback with org-drill is it manages schedules for one "card" per heading, hence cloze items are not scheduled individually. So, either you remember entirely "Alfred North Whitehead wrote [Principia Mathematica] in [1910]" or not at all. In Anki, not only the book title "[Principia Mathematica]" and the written year "[1910]" are tested separately (same as org-drill), but also scheduled/scored separately too (where org-drill falls short).

I use both, org-drill mostly for books, Anki for "standalone" facts. But I'm always wishing for some kind of a system that hit the sweet spot between them two.

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#168

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

axiomek wrote: post #100

About a week ago I developed a browser plugin for chrome and firefox which replaces the new tab page with anki flashcards to review. The idea is that with it, each time I open a new tab I will review a few cards, thus making it more lightweight than an hour-long anki session. If anyone is interested the code (licensed under The Unlicense) and links to the web stores can be found at https://github.com/corollari/ankiTa…

wow this is a great tool, I have been searching for something like this.

If only there was a way to quickly add cards that would be nice.

Re: Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning

#169

Post by afro88 »

laurieg wrote: post #114
afro88 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the way you use Anki is more of a learning supplementary rather than a singular tool? Like you are learning of words elsewhere and entering them into Anki for memorization once you have learned about them? I’m just curious. I’d like to use Anki to get better at reading and playing chords (on keyboard / piano) from symbol notation but I haven’t started yet. Would you recommend learning each chord one by on…

I think that's a very fair assessment of how I use Anki. I think if you spend all your time using Anki and no time interacting with the actual language you're learning you won't get very far. Basically every sentence I put into Anki comes from a book, movie, TV show or conversation. The question about piano chords is really interesting. I often compare learning a language to learning to play the piano. Both are real…

So true. My goal with learning to play chords from symbols is to look at a chord progression and be able to play it without too much trouble. Not really for performance or anything, but to help with composition.

So perhaps a good approach would be to do the Anki spaced learning sessions in front of the keyboard and actually play the chord as the answer. I may not become a great real time sight reader, but being able to see a chord like C+9 / C95 and be able to play it a second or two later should be good enough.

Thanks for the advice.

Post reply on HN