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Spaced Repetition

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Re: Spaced Repetition

#31

Post by burtonator »

I'm absolutely in love with spaced repetition.

Last year I ran an experiment where I would do Duolingo but ONLY in my spare time.

5-30 minutes per day but only when I'm waiting in line, having a cup of coffee , or driving my car on the highway (just joking about that last one).

After about a year I realized that I had a passable understanding of German.

Mind you I did this in my SPARE time... so it was basically like I had a super human skill.

Instead of knowing the latest and greatest gossip about Google (which would be irrelevant in a year) I now had a passing understanding of a new language!

I became pretty convinced that I did NOT want to invest any more time learning anything without having a spaced repetition system.

I started using Anki but honestly I found it really rough.

I tried to figure out a way to use PDFs and web content and work with Anki but it was a massive pain having the two systems completely separate.

If I could integrate them I figured I'd have the holy grail!

I started working on a basic proof of concept which ended up taking me 4-8 hours a day for the last six months:

https://getpolarized.io/

It's still getting there - not perfect yet.

But it supports full PDF and HTML documents, annotation, and sync to Anki.

You can create flashcards while you're reading and don't have to switch apps.

You additionally keep the original context (where it was found, etc).

It also allows you to keep everything in one place. All your books. All your notes and flashcards.

It supports Anki sync via a plugin so if you're already using Anki you can push new flashcards to it directly.

It's not as user friendly as I would like. I'm actively working on that part now. It's more an Open Source project than a product but I'm rapidly polishing it to make it more usable.

If you guys like it but it's not perfect drop me a line and I usually prioritize user bugs.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#32

Post by wahnfrieden »

If anyone's studying Japanese, I made two iOS apps for spaced repetition systems specializing in the unique needs of learning Japanese.

The first is a flashcard application called Manabi. It uses a similar algorithm as Anki with a priority on UX.

https://manabi.io

The other is Manabi Reader, which complements the flashcard app. It curates feeds of interesting short-form content, has one-tap dictionary lookups, optional furigana injection and JLPT level tagging, and it lets you create flashcards from the words you're learning as you read.

https://reader.manabi.io

Glad to hear any feedback. I'm currently working on word tracking functionality for Manabi Reader, to track your reading progress and let you see which and how many words in an article you should know already vs. words new to you.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#33

Post by mlevental »

burtonator wrote: post #31

I'm absolutely in love with spaced repetition. Last year I ran an experiment where I would do Duolingo but ONLY in my spare time. 5-30 minutes per day but only when I'm waiting in line, having a cup of coffee , or driving my car on the highway (just joking about that last one). After about a year I realized that I had a passable understanding of German. Mind you I did this in my SPARE time... so it was basically like…

I see you promoting your app/site constantly. I don't understand why this isn't against the rules on hn.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#34

Post by adbge »

jeffshek wrote: post #26

If anyone's interested, I've compiled a lot of strategies and tips around spaced repetition and Anki that I've learned over five years and ~11k cards. https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies-tips-a...

Neat! I have a similar page I put up at 10k cards. We should be friends

http://rs.io/anki-tips/

Re: Spaced Repetition

#35

Post by jbaudanza »

I've had very good results using memrise's spaced-repetition tool to learn Korean vocab. I find it's a good way to get words into this unindexed "staging area" in my brain. And then when I need them during a real life situation, they sort of pop into my consciousness out of nowhere.

I also built a tool to build spaced repetition flash cards from the captions in YouTube videos. This uses the SuperMemo-2 algorithm, the same algorithm as Anki. This has helped me a lot with my listening comprehension.

https://www.captionpop.com/flash-cards/splash

Re: Spaced Repetition

#36

Post by actsof »

c13u wrote: post #27
mrfusion wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share an example card? I can’t picture what you’re doing.

Other examples of cards that I made and found useful during my job-hunting process: https://cards.c13u.com/browse[0] [0] Disclaimer, I made cards.c13u.com for a class project

You copied the link incorrectly, it throws a 404. https://cards.c13u.com/browse works instead.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#37

Post by DarthMader »

FiberBundle wrote: post #17

I use Anki, but I have the problem that I tend to associate the specific form of the question, a particular latex formula etc. with the answer. As soon as I look at the question or read the first couple of words, the answer already pops up, so I'm afraid that I don't actually learn to remember the concepts but rather question/answer pairs. Does anybody have some recommendations for dealing with this problem?

My general strategy around that is have the least amount of context possible. If context is necessary, then create multiple cards around it. For example, for a cloze deletion card, it's not uncommon I have up to 3+ clozes for a single note.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#38

Post by gexla »

mlevental wrote: post #33
burtonator wrote: post #31

I'm absolutely in love with spaced repetition. Last year I ran an experiment where I would do Duolingo but ONLY in my spare time. 5-30 minutes per day but only when I'm waiting in line, having a cup of coffee , or driving my car on the highway (just joking about that last one). After about a year I realized that I had a passable understanding of German. Mind you I did this in my SPARE time... so it was basically like…

I see you promoting your app/site constantly. I don't understand why this isn't against the rules on hn.

> I see you promoting your app/site constantly. I don't understand why this isn't against the rules on hn.

You can vote and you can flag. The source of the app in question is available on Github with a GPL V3 license.

Personally I'm happy to see someone so passionately tackle what I find to be an interesting problem. He's open and approachable. He should be encouraged. He's not advertising the monetized portion of the app (saving to Firebase, which he has to pay for himself.)

As he said, it's not "there" yet, but how else do you get there without becoming so intimately involved with a problem? I'm rooting for Polar and happy to see regular updates coming in through the channels I monitor.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#39

Post by asymmetric »

dguo wrote: post #16

I had considered using spaced repetition software for a while after a long time of being frustrated with my poor memory. I finally started using Anki last September after reading Augmenting Long-term Memory [1]. I started off with just putting in a new vocabulary word every day and have been gradually ramping up the amount of info that I put into it. Now, I will add anything from programming details (e.g. how do you…

Do you use multiple decks? I found myself creating several, and then finding it hard to follow up on many of them. It’s a pity though, because some of the cards in them were interesting, but the whole deck wasn’t. Maybe I should have a “misc” one.
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