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Using Anki to remember what you read

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Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#41

Post by kd5bjo »

mattlutze wrote: post #27
kd5bjo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have absolutely no idea ... how I could more efficiently memorize information that must be memorized. Outside of a schooling/testing context, memorization alone is rarely beneficial. You need to be able to practically apply the knowledge, which happens through experience; looking details up when you need them forms a natural kind of spaced repetition anyway that’s tuned to what you actually need to know.

Well, as a counterpoint, imagine how much time could be saved if you were able to recall from memory not just the most-used functions that you need for a problem, but the next level down of sometimes or rarely used ones. Or for patterns, or for other such things that can be simplified down into memorizable / recallable blocks. Regularly looking things up is ok, but actively re-experiencing the thing you're trying to…

> actively re-experiencing the thing you're trying to learn is a better way to make it stick

On this we agree, but to me this means practical application in various contexts, rather than call-and-response memory drills.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#43

Post by LeonB »

LeonB wrote: post #34
tokamak-teapot wrote: post #2

I’ve used Anki for months, trying to learn the Greek alphabet. I’ve failed. I don’t think I’ve learned more than one or two of its letters. Is it possible I’m just not compatible with the way this works? Any tips on alternatives?

Using it to learn an alphabet effectively probably requires more upfront work (setting up and improving the cards) than you’d expect. It’s not just 1 letter = 1 card. You want to memorise the entire alphabet as a sequence not just as individual letters. So you need cards of little overlapping sequences, like ABC, BCD, etc. The supermemo essays cover this scenario. With that work in place you’d learn it quickly. As ju…

The supermemo article is here:

https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20ru...

...by the creator of supermemo who basically formulated the whole idea.

In Point 1 he explains you shouldn’t use spaced repetition to learn. Use it to remember.

In Point 10 he covers how to remember “enumerations” (with an alphabet example)

You have to go back to the classics when you want to do something properly.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#44

Post by CrazyStat »

Grue3 wrote: post #25
throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends what you're doing. I mainly use it for learning vocabulary. I'm learning German and Anki is nothing short of amazing. I'm easily able to learn ~20 words a day primarily just practicing on my phone during bathroom breaks. On the other hand I'm also learning Russian and Anki just doesn't work. Words won't stick in my head the way they do with German. I've heard very numerous accounts of it being great for Ja…

>On the other hand I'm also learning Russian and Anki just doesn't work. Words won't stick in my head the way they do with German. Because (for English speakers) Russian is harder than German. You need to reduce the number of words learned per day. Japanese is even harder to learn, but you have to be persistent. I spent more than an hour every single day for several years straight to learn the vocabulary. Also there'…

Just going to be a bit nitpicky here. Noun declension is a feature of various non-slavic languages, including Latin which English speakers have a decent chance of having been exposed to.

Modern Russian has 6 cases (with a couple more that pop up very rarely) with 3 genders and singular/plural endings. It's a total of 36 possible combinations, which is not that bad. Masculine and neuter also share most endings so there aren't actually 36 unique ones

Probably the most difficult thing about cases when I was learning Russian was remembering which verbs took a different case than I would expect, e.g. dative instead of accusative for what seems like a direct object.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#45

Post by knubie »

manish_gill wrote: post #26
knubie wrote: post #4

If Anki’s UI/UX turns you off, I’ve built an alternative called Mochi ( https://mochi.cards/ ) that uses markdown. Incidentally it also supports Zettelkasten like note taking like described in the article.

Looks great! I have a few questions. - I have a huge Zettelkasten note archive (I manage it through Sublime-Zk, which is getting a bit slow to operate it). Can I somehow directly import all my Zettel notes? - I tried to import my Anki cards, but it seems like while I could go through them, I couldn't assign them to any particular deck/reclassify them. They show up as part of a "Not Found" deck and I don't see any opt…

> I have a huge Zettelkasten note archive (I manage it through Sublime-Zk, which is getting a bit slow to operate it). Can I somehow directly import all my Zettel notes?

You can import the markdown files as notes, but it won’t maintain the linking. If you send me a sample I can look into adding a Zettelkasten specific importer.

> I tried to import my Anki cards, but it seems like while I could go through them, I couldn't assign them to any particular deck/reclassify them. They show up as part of a "Not Found" deck and I don't see any option/drag-and-drop method to move them anywhere else.

Sounds like the importer derped a bit and couldn’t find the deck associated with those cards. If you send me the .apkg file I can take a look. Anki’s data model is a little weird and there’s probably some edge cases I haven’t accounted for.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#46

Post by barry-cotter »

tokamak-teapot wrote: post #2

I’ve used Anki for months, trying to learn the Greek alphabet. I’ve failed. I don’t think I’ve learned more than one or two of its letters. Is it possible I’m just not compatible with the way this works? Any tips on alternatives?

If you want to learn the Greek alphabet try leaving Modern or Ancient Greek on Duolingo. If there’s an Anki deck with modern Greek, translation and romanization that would almost certainly work better than trying to associate a sound to an arbitrary symbol with no scaffolding to help it stick.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#47

Post by rgoulter »

oweiler wrote: post #3

I sometimes wonder if tools like Anki aren't just another form of procrastination. The time invested could probably be better spent.

It is worth considering the cost, yes.

My time isn't so optimised that 15 minutes each day on Anki is otherwise going to be spent on deep work.

http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html This writeup estimates his usage of Anki is 4-7 minutes of review time for each card over 20 years. So, if it's worth taking 10 minutes to remember a fact, it's worth putting in Anki. (This writeup also explains it's not worth putting things you don't care about into Anki).

Anki seems well suited for domains where you need to quickly access facts from a wide domain, e.g. vocabulary for language learning.

It's harder to see as important for programming. If you're programming you'll be able to recall the things you have experience using.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#48

Post by dbriles »

Anki (and spaced repetition) is awesome! Some things I've had used it for to great success:

1. Memorizing Japanese vocabulary, pitch-accent, and basic grammar rules. It would probably be useful, at least to some degree, for any language like this.

2. Any certification which required strict memorization. All the basic ComptTIA certs were like this, and the CCNA:R&S cert (unfortunately) required memorizing commands and their syntax.

3. Verses in the Bible (though this is pretty basic in comparison, just Address Text).

In all honestly I think one of the best things you can do if you need to memorize something is make the flash cards yourself, whether with Anki, another app, or even just index cards. This forces you to think about what it is that you're trying to memorize and phrase the text of the cards in a way that you understand. After that, reviewing is just kind of "maintenance" in my opinion. There was definitely a marked difference in my retention when I was using pre-made Anki decks vs. creating them myself. It is also easier to create cards using the desktop app.

It's a side note, but I also don't agree with Anki's pricing model. The app is free on Android[1] but $25 on iOS[2]. I think I heard (I don't have a source) that the developer's justification was that they needed to make money from the all the time and effort they spent creating Anki, plus hosting costs, etc - so why not do a cheaper price on both Android/iOS, or do a free-to-download app with a subscription model? For what it's worth you can use the web version on iOS but the app is a better experience IMO.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki

[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-flashcards/id373493...

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#49

Post by wahnfrieden »

For Japanese learners, I built two iOS apps that cater to the special needs of the language.

Manabi [0] is a flashcard app with the same algorithm as Anki but nicer UI.

Manabi Reader [1] collects a bunch of short-form reading materials, lets you tap words to look them up, and tap to add a flashcard. It tracks the individual words you read and charts your progress word by word and kanji by kanji. This app has gotten pretty popular so I have been improving it substantially.

[0] https://manabi.io

[1] https://reader.manabi.io/

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#50

Post by inetsee »

motohagiography wrote: post #36

Just tried to use it. What's with the Anki UX? You can't just install the mobile app and start downloading shared decks to use.

I believe the mobile app is limited to just studying. Creating new cards and downloading shared decks must be done using either the desktop app or the web app.
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