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Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

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Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#61

Post by ced »

pritovido wrote: post #34
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.

I thought I had bad recall, but the fact is that I did not know about the memory. I have trained people in my environment and they have improved enormously. It is a very good idea that you read a book about mnemonics, and all the techniques, things like exaggerating pictures or places in your head, remembering faces, what a neural connection is and so on, and start applying it. My upper limit (in anki) is over 400 ne…

Yeah, 40 new words / day is very manageable. I used my own word lists instead of Anki, but same concept. 1000 words is enough for basic interactions (1 month) and 3000 words is generally good enough for conversation that doesn't get into the vocabulary long tail (just 3 months!) In an immersion context + some grammar textbook, it makes language learning much faster than is generally assumed.

Most people that feel they need a language class, but those are terrible for learning vocabulary. Vocab learning is best done solo.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#62

Post by nuclearnice1 »

Jabbles wrote: post #33

I have used Anki productively, I think it's a great tool, and should be a component of learning in many fields. But I can't help but think it could be a lot better, a lot more efficient, perhaps even 2x more. Anki allows you to customise many aspects of when cards are shown. But presumably those settings can be tuned for a individual, a subject, or even a card. One person probably doesn't have enough data to know wha…

This is a great idea. Thanks for sharing.

Just to restate what you said, adding nothing. Imagine you had Anki for a similar cohort studying a coherent single course. You’ll be able to get a sense of what topics confuse everyone and what correlation there are in confusion. If you had trouble with X, then you need extra guidance on A & B.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#63

Post by maxdarapper »

Anki is good, but the problems that I had with it was that I was not learning the flashcards well enough on the first day to to recall those flashcards on subsequent days and it took too long to make flashcards, so I made myself a flashcards app. http://flashcardmax.com/download

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#64

Post by daniellarusso »

pritovido wrote: post #36
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.

PS: You also need to understand that everybody is different. I am incredible good remembering faces and facial expressions, very good remembering places. I see a place on a picture, I know where it is if I have traveled there. But I am very bad remembering sounds. So I never try to remember using sounds like other people do. You should learn about yourself, what are your strengths and use them. Buy different memory b…

This is very interesting, personally, because I am horrible at recognizing faces, but hearing the sound of the voice, I can recognize the person.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#67

Post by waxachasee »

wendyshu wrote: post #52
Viliam1234 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the facts are in your head, you can make a connection between them. If they are in different places on the web, unless someone else already linked them for you, they remain separate.

Can you give an example?

Anki is used a lot in medical education. There's a lot of small details, and you can string them along to form the big picture. An example is going from symptoms -> diagnosis -> treatment options -> drug side effects. You can't just memorize use drug X for Y, but you incorporate information that you know to formulate the best plan. Suppose the patient has kidney disease - you've memorized X is nephrotoxic so you find another treatment.

I will say this is easier for some and harder for others. I've noticed some people have a lot of difficulty recalling facts without a specific cue when using Anki. It's best used with traditional learning, but you can focus more on the why.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#69

Post by wenc »

Smaug123 wrote: post #14
DavidSJ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Deleting is often recommended but it's an irreversible operation.

Suspending on the other hand, takes the card out of rotation, and if at some future point one cares about the card again, it is easy to unsuspend.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#70

Post by krosaen »

I use Anki a few times a week. When I've used it for math (as I work my way through Gilbert Strang's book "Linear Algebra and its applications"), I add full problems that seemed to be key to the topic, or surprised me in some way. These take longer to review, but I find it's been really helpful. And once it sticks, I don't have to review it again for months.

I also find it can be helpful to have a single card that prompts review of related definitions, for instance:

"What are the four subspaces of a matrix A? What are their dimensions with respect to the rank r of A? What are they subspaces of? (Fundamental theorem of Linear Algebra part 1)"

Remembering these things together is easier for me than breaking this down into multiple cards as one piece of this in isolation doesn't make as much sense as a part of the whole.

This is all to say that I disagree with the author on the point that it's important to find ways to break up cards to be bite sized. Otherwise great post IMO!

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