How We Learn [1] has a chapter on this.
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/221559/how-we-learn...
Spaced Repetition
91–100 of 115 posts
Re: Spaced Repetition
#92I 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…
I have been using Anki for the past six months for French, more-or-less following the Fluent Forever method.
I found that the method worked really well for the basic vocabulary (pictures for easily identifiable objects), cloze deletion for basic grammar and other common words. However, I have recently noticed two related problems as my deck and knowledge of the language grows is size (I have about 5000 unique cards at the moment) surrounding words with similar meanings:
- I often find that in the cloze deletion cards I insert a word that correctly completes the phrase but is not the term used on the card
- I have found that with some words I know that the word belongs in a phrase but I don't know the words specific meaning. An example using English: if the phrase was "I bit the apple" I would know that "bit" is somehow related to eating, but wouldn't remember how it differs from "eat", "chew", ect.
I'm curious if you are anyone else has had similar problems. Particularly in regards to the second problem, as it is seems to have the biggest downside. I am thinking of breaking the gold rule of the FF method and just putting definitions on the cards to make sure I actually know exactly what a word means.
Re: Spaced Repetition
#93I truly believe that spaced repetition is near-magic and it is a tragedy that it's not integrated into our society and educational system at a fundamental level. It makes me shudder to think of all the years spent learning things only to forget them weeks or months later. In any case, I've recently embarked on a long-term educational plan utilizing spaced repetition. My goal is to learn dozens of languages, historica…
> I truly believe that spaced repetition is near-magic and it is a tragedy that it's not integrated into our society and educational system
Spaced repetition is absolutely key to memorizing the Qur'an [0]-- Memorizing through space-repetition is taught at almost all Madrasas (institutes of Islamic learning) [1] to students from a very young age (it isn't uncommon for students as young as 15yrs old to memorize the entire Qur'an [2]). Revisions [3] every now and then helps; and so, that is prevalent, as well.
[0] https://sfjamaat.org/sf/mtb/hifz/A%20practical%20guide%20for...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasa
[2] Two key orthogonal parts to memorizing the Qur'an are the rules of recitation (Tajwid) and reading (Qira'at), which prove difficult for non-Arabs.
Re: Spaced Repetition
#94Been using Chessable (chessable.com) for chess improvement and it really works wonders. The format is great for chess, especially for learning openings or for tactical situations where there is a clear best move.
Re: Spaced Repetition
#95From a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19827910.
Other threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Spaced%20Repetition%20comments...
Re: Spaced Repetition
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also enjoy this and have found that a good heuristic for whether or not someone else will is essentially "how much do you enjoy Seinfeld?"
Your theory holds true with my wife and I. I love Seinfeld, she hates it :D I should note that I actually don't find what I do comedic, nor am I doing it for comedic effect - I'm analyzing the scenario in a similar way that I find myself programming. It seems to feel.. similar to me. Eg, if we're discussing superman I might start thinking about all the normal scenarios Superman must find himself in. How he deals with…
I enjoy analyzing in the same way, it's just that Seinfeld takes the same tendency and turns them into jokes, which seem to be much funnier to people who enjoy breaking down trivial things.
My version of your Superman example is thinking about mutants from the X-Men universe with trivial mutations: there must be countless useless X-gene mutations, right? What might those be? Invisible skin, but not organs?
Re: Spaced Repetition
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
There isn't much value in memorizing vast amounts of facts like that anymore (you already mentioned two key areas where that's still needed: language and medicine). Nowadays it's better to remember where to find facts and learn quickly than to simply remember facts upfront. It's fine for you to have a personal goal of using spaced repetition to learn dozens of languages, historical events, etc, but it's really not a…
Sorry but I disagree completely. The ability to quickly find information online doesn’t negate the fact that intellectual progress and creativity often come from making connections between disparate fields. The only way to make these deeper connections is to truly know and digest the information, not simply to google it. It is probably a consequence of the computer age that we think of information as a singular piece…
But surely that's not true of (for example) learning one's colors in German?
Synthesis of ideas and innovation comes in areas of high ambiguity, subjectivity, and risk and no amount of spaced repetition will turn you into a Bucky Fuller or Raymond Loewy or Alfred Sloan.
There you must substitute a voracious appetite for discovery and experimentation.
Re: Spaced Repetition
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be difficult to put in lot of latex or even diagrams. We need something which can auto-generate the notes for us.
I've tried using anki for non-vocabulary stuff. My impression is that to recall some fact, what I put in the card might not be what I care about recalling. e.g. for Set, wikipedia has "a set is an abstract data type that can store unique values, without any particular order". Whereas what I might care about is "a Set has items, and it's quick to check if the item is in the set". -- If I don't know what a Set is and h…
I use anki for math, computer science, languages and a lot of other things. i do this successfully (at least by my standards) and i think it works very well
Re: Spaced Repetition
#99I truly believe that spaced repetition is near-magic and it is a tragedy that it's not integrated into our society and educational system at a fundamental level. It makes me shudder to think of all the years spent learning things only to forget them weeks or months later. In any case, I've recently embarked on a long-term educational plan utilizing spaced repetition. My goal is to learn dozens of languages, historica…
I have been using spaced repetition for roughly 3 years and have seen some amazing personal growth.
I was born in the US, and have now learned 2 languages (Italian B2/C1, French B1/B2, and I just started Spanish but it is so similar to italian its gonna be pretty easy to pick up ).
I remember almost every book I have read in the past three years by using kindle highlights and turning them into flash- cards. I use it for Math, Computer Science, papers, new english vocabulary etc. Starting using Polar Bookshelf for IR
Some general thoughts:
1. Anki is pretty complicate, it is really important to read the manual
2. Create all cards yourself. If possible, always include sounds and images.
3. Follow these steps when creating cards: https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20ru...
4. Do your reviews every day
I'm actually looking forward to seeing what is possible in say 5-10 years, after i have read 250-700 more books and studied a few more languages. It is the single best learning hack i have ever come across.
Re: Spaced Repetition
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
There isn't much value in memorizing vast amounts of facts like that anymore (you already mentioned two key areas where that's still needed: language and medicine). Nowadays it's better to remember where to find facts and learn quickly than to simply remember facts upfront. It's fine for you to have a personal goal of using spaced repetition to learn dozens of languages, historical events, etc, but it's really not a…
Sorry but I disagree completely. The ability to quickly find information online doesn’t negate the fact that intellectual progress and creativity often come from making connections between disparate fields. The only way to make these deeper connections is to truly know and digest the information, not simply to google it. It is probably a consequence of the computer age that we think of information as a singular piece…
Connecting information is orthogonal to remembering it. Same with digesting information: you don't need to use something like spaced-repetition to commit knowledge to long term memory in order to digest it, you just need to spend some time understanding the info. In fact, I'd argue that spaced-repetition runs somewhat counter to deeply understanding information. It's easy to repetitively memorize and recall info without actually understanding it.