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Spaced Repetition

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Re: Spaced Repetition

#61

Post by yasp »

jclay wrote: post #33

I’ve used Anki pretty consistently throughout my university studies for just about every course. I plan to continue using it to keep a high level overview of some of the important maths concepts I want to stay fresh on. I’ve been enjoying Mochi[0] as an alternative recently. It has a much nicer UI and the core features I use are all there. I find it much faster to create my cards in Markdown and with a keyboard drive…

Too bad there is no mobile app. That + cloud sync is Anki's killer feature IMO.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#62

Post by hombre_fatal »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #25
s9w wrote: post #10

I often feel like learning things with Anki puts memories into the wrong part of the brain. It happens way too often that I can perfectly recall something from Anki (on a PC or phone), but have a lot of trouble recalling it 'in action'.

It might be becasue you are just training recognition and not production. I use Anki to study Russian, with great results, following Gabriel Werner's Fluent Forever. In the book, he teaches how to learn the words and the grammar of a language using Anki. One of the fundamental ideas is to both create recognition and production cards. The recognition cards are the ones with a word in your target language, of which you…

> It might be becasue you are just training recognition and not production.

Like trying to learn a foreign language by only reading.

There was a sheepish point in my life not too long ago where I had a bookshelf full of Spanish books that I had read, yet I couldn't follow a conversation or speak much at all.

Of course, nothing that can't be quickly fixed by dating a native-speaker that doesn't want to or can't use English. :)

Re: Spaced Repetition

#63

Post by hombre_fatal »

mr_crankypants wrote: post #16
gringoDan wrote: post #11

I've found that one of the best ways to learn is to combine spaced repetition with shorter, yet higher-frequency study sessions (think two daily 30-minute blocks, rather than one 1-hour block). This allows you to also take advantage of the primacy & recency effects.

Wow, that's a lot of flashcard time. According to Anki, I'm averaging 10 minutes a day on my language vocabulary deck. It does happen in a series of short, 1-2 minute bursts when I'm sitting on the toilet or whatever. To that end, another useful thing I've discovered: Reviewing flashcards (and, spaced repetition) is not a good way to learn. It's a good way to reinforce your memory of things you've already learned. Th…

> Meaning you really shouldn't ever use a pre-made deck.

Agreed. The process of making your own deck is too important.

Not to mention, I've never found a deck that was more than 25% applicable to me. Even "advanced" Spanish decks had a bunch of chaff and beginner-content to wade through. And you start realizing you should've just invested the time making your own starting one year ago.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#64

Post by hombre_fatal »

flomble wrote: post #51
asdkhadsj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Warning: attempt at taking joke seriously] As an aside, I love doing this sort of thing. In conversation, someone makes a joke about X doing something impossible, and then all of us who analyze everything to death start playing the scenario in our head to understand ramifications or limitations in the fictional and often impossible scenario. Drives my wife nuts, but I enjoy it so much :)

Sounds like Yes-And ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and... ), accepting the premise and expanding on the joke. Tell your wife you're using a proven comedic technique.

> Tell your wife you're using a proven comedic technique.

"You see, I'm actually being funny right now. It's comedy, trust me."

Re: Spaced Repetition

#65

Post by cle »

sausla wrote: post #19

Seems like spaced repetition works great for language learning and remembering new terms. I wonder how it could help to get better as a programmer. Any tips?

It can absolutely help here! I've been using Anki for about 7 years, and most of my cards (~9000) are CS-related.

I've found that focusing on the fundamentals helps for me. E.g. most programming languages have a few fundamental ideas that they're built around--memorizing those is usually good enough to quickly hop around programming languages and be productive. Algorithms, operating systems, networks, compilers, machine learning, math, etc...I grabbed some textbooks for those and just focused on the first few chapters, which lay out the fundamentals, and being able to recall and think about those in my head has helped me immensely.

Trivia is occasionally useful but it's hard to transfer to real life: e.g. even though I can answer questions about CLI command arguments when studying, I still have a hard time recalling them when sitting at a computer. Memorizing how to find the answers I need is way more useful (and a lot of this is knowing the right terminology and fundamental concepts...which are easier to recall out-of-context).

I also focus on different formulations of the same concept. Backwards and forwards retrieval: recognizing the concept from its description, and being able to describe the concept. I make separate cards for those. I also put "generative" cards for the same concept, which force me to practice using the concepts, and recognizing when to use them. And also recognizing concepts from code or other contexts. Usually just having one card for a concept isn't enough for me, unless it's really simple or is just trivia. For a hard concept, I might create 5-10 cards to help me practice recalling and using the concept in different contexts.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#66

Post by dmix »

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #56
a-robinson wrote: post #4

With how often I've seen spaced repetition mentioned online recently, I'm starting to assume there's a grand conspiracy that's trying to use spaced repetition to trick me into remembering about spaced repetition.

Joke aside, what you're describing sounds more like the Baader-Meinhof effect[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect

“X big website is down” just hit HN the last few weeks and people on our normally highly rational news site were convinced it was a connected conspiracy.

Re: Spaced Repetition

#67

Post by earllee »

I built an app earlier last year to help with spaced repetition on web content: https://retaino.com

It's been interesting to see a lot of interested over the past year around the concept, though it may just be the Badder-Meinhof effect at play (which I'm now able to recall the name of thanks to Retaino!)

Re: Spaced Repetition

#68

Post by knownhoot »

earllee wrote: post #67

I built an app earlier last year to help with spaced repetition on web content: https://retaino.com It's been interesting to see a lot of interested over the past year around the concept, though it may just be the Badder-Meinhof effect at play (which I'm now able to recall the name of thanks to Retaino!)

This is exactly what i've been looking for for a while now. signing up! have been using readwise for books, but this will be great for things beyond books! thanks!

Re: Spaced Repetition

#69

Post by DennisP »

jsty wrote: post #18
a-robinson wrote: post #4

With how often I've seen spaced repetition mentioned online recently, I'm starting to assume there's a grand conspiracy that's trying to use spaced repetition to trick me into remembering about spaced repetition.

[Warning: attempt at taking joke seriously] Surely if this were so, it would mean you'd see fewer mentions of spaced repetition over time, rather than more? (assuming your comment implies having seen more than usual recently)

This assumes everybody started learning at the same time. Since they didn't, there have to be compromises on timing.

But just seeing the answer repeatedly isn't sufficient, you also need the effort to recall the answer. That's why so many headlines take the form of a question.

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