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Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

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Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#11

Post by HaoZeke »

barry-cotter wrote: post #8
HaoZeke wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, somehow there's always a lot of love for spaced repetition even though it doesn't help with comprehension. I believe re learning complicated topics is better than mugging up jargon.

Rote learning absolutely does help with comprehension. If you understand all of the words in “ Tod mach’s mir leicht, wenn du kommst vor deiner Zeit” reading it and understanding it is trivial. If you have to look up each word individually your comprehension will at best be enormously slowed. The same principle applies if what you’re reading is a chemical formula, a logical proof or a description of a historical even…

Probably for languages, but even still I would assert memorizing a dictionary is less informative than reading 50 books.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#12

Post by Smaug123 »

fizixer wrote: post #2

> Anki as Learning Superpower If it's a superpower, it's at best a rote learning superpower. Can you use Anki to learn quantum field theory, and solve the lamb shift problem without looking at the existing solutions? Cut out the hyperbole please.

(Author here.)

Learning has many components. Even on its own, brute memorisation is a powerful tool. But see e.g. SuperMemo's creator on Incremental Reading (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading) for a more generalised view of how to use spaced repetition for what you might refer to as "actual" understanding.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#13

Post by barry-cotter »

amelius wrote: post #6

Anki is missing a button: "I don't care". For example, I don't care if for the question "In ruby, how do I get the previous regex match" the answer is "$&". If I ever need it, I'll just look it up.

That button is called delete.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#14

Post by Smaug123 »

DavidSJ wrote: post #10
amelius wrote: post #6

Anki is missing a button: "I don't care". For example, I don't care if for the question "In ruby, how do I get the previous regex match" the answer is "$&". If I ever need it, I'll just look it up.

If you don’t care, don’t add it to your deck. What’s that you say? You downloaded premade decks? Don’t do that! Constructing your deck yourself is an important part of the learning process.

(Author here.)

Seconded on all counts! Ruthlessly delete cards you don't care about; make your own cards so that they reflect your own mental structures. In the article, I allude to this by talking about how people can undergo very different mental motions to obtain the same "serialised" fact like "78% of the air is nitrogen".

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#15

Post by Smaug123 »

HaoZeke wrote: post #11
barry-cotter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rote learning absolutely does help with comprehension. If you understand all of the words in “ Tod mach’s mir leicht, wenn du kommst vor deiner Zeit” reading it and understanding it is trivial. If you have to look up each word individually your comprehension will at best be enormously slowed. The same principle applies if what you’re reading is a chemical formula, a logical proof or a description of a historical even…

Probably for languages, but even still I would assert memorizing a dictionary is less informative than reading 50 books.

I think there's a false dichotomy here. Memorising a dictionary is easy, because memorisation is a choice (with spaced repetition). Reading a book in an unfamiliar language takes lots of time and mental effort. Both will contribute to your understanding of the language; perhaps memorising a dictionary contributes less, but then there's a lower activation energy involved in it too: whenever you have five minutes spare, you can just sit down and learn a couple of cards.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#16

Post by leke »

Trying to learn Finish vocab, Anki made me realize I had terrible recall. Sometimes, I couldn't even remember what the last freaking card was, and I would forget most things the next day, and everything the day after. After about 3 weeks, I had only remembered 3 or 4 words, so I gave up.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#17

Post by bhrgunatha »

DavidSJ wrote: post #10
amelius wrote: post #6

Anki is missing a button: "I don't care". For example, I don't care if for the question "In ruby, how do I get the previous regex match" the answer is "$&". If I ever need it, I'll just look it up.

If you don’t care, don’t add it to your deck. What’s that you say? You downloaded premade decks? Don’t do that! Constructing your deck yourself is an important part of the learning process.

I use anki to document and remember all my emacs custom key-bindings. That might sound silly but it's easy to accumulate useful things over the years in emacs and forget about them.

Emacs is vast and deep and there's a lot to learn and remember.

It also serves the same purpose for key-bindings and functions in various modes and packages.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#18

Post by knuthsat »

leke wrote: post #16

Trying to learn Finish vocab, Anki made me realize I had terrible recall. Sometimes, I couldn't even remember what the last freaking card was, and I would forget most things the next day, and everything the day after. After about 3 weeks, I had only remembered 3 or 4 words, so I gave up.

There’s a setting you can tweak allowing you to set smaller intervals like 1 3 7 15 30 minutes until card will be postponed for the next day. Takes a bit longer to learn a new card but it should work. I went from 30% forgotten on each session to 5-10%.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#19

Post by khamba »

amelius wrote: post #6

Anki is missing a button: "I don't care". For example, I don't care if for the question "In ruby, how do I get the previous regex match" the answer is "$&". If I ever need it, I'll just look it up.

A sibling comment suggests deleting the card, but I personally like to use the suspend feature.
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