Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition • Hacker News Board

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#201

Post by digianarchist » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

armatav wrote: post #168

divan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this. I use Anki for more than a decade, and every single time there is a touch of frustration that Anki UX stuck in mid-2000. Another super annoying feature is that historically Anki is free except iOS – somehow mentality of "iOS users are rich" sneaked in – and Anki for iOS costs ~25$. This makes it prohibitively hard to recommend Anki to non-Android users, especially to younger generation which virtually d…

It's a one-time $25 cost. It is also entirely worth it. iOS users spend an order of magnitude more money than Android users, so that was the creator's logic - use them as the "whales". It's 100% fine and honestly he should be charging a subscription for such a great app, on every platform.

I've bought it twice because Apple wouldn't allow me to migrate my purchases when I moved countries.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#202

Post by kixiQu » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 6:25 AM UTC

nullsense wrote: post #155

kixiQu wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs money to publish an iOS app in a way that it does not for Android. In addition, the Android app was able to leverage the fact that Anki's desktop app is written in Java. It has nothing to do with an idea that "iOS users are rich". It is easy to recommend Ankiweb instead since it works well enough for mobile. (I also question whether there are really a significant number of people who type -- at least Latin c…

I thought the desktop app was written in Python?

huh, you're totally right--I misremembered! thanks for the correction.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#203

Post by fizixer » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 6:48 AM UTC

Smaug123 wrote: post #12

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.

"learning superpower" = A learning technique so effective so as to be sufficient for all kinds of learning, to the exclusion of all other learning techiques.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#204

Post by eska » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 6:54 AM UTC

cehrlich wrote: post #130

rasen58 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens quite a lot when using Anki where you have to start doing it for hours. If you stop doing for weeks, and then try to come back, there are so many cards piled up that it would take so long to go through that you just don't feel like doing it anymore. How would you solve this?

I've been using Anki to learn Japanese for about a year now, quite successfully. The largest factor determining your daily reviews is your daily new cards - it depends on retention somewhat, but in general daily reviews after a few months stabilize at around 10x daily new cards. So the best way to use Anki is to limit your daily new cards to an amount where you can easily handle the reviews. And yeah, you basically c…

There's absolutely no need to do all the cards for the day. The option to limit cards per day is just for psychological effect because completionists get demotivated by not hitting 0. Just do as much per day as you can and ignore that number.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#205

Post by eska » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

Smaug123 wrote: post #105

coldtea wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Staring at fact flashcards for hours on end just felt like a waste of time. Why would you need to "stare at fact flashcards for hours on end"? The whole idea is the opposite, to minimize learning time, and only stare at a flashcard periodically at the time when it makes more sense.

I think this sounds symptomatic of having made flashcards which are too big. There was a time when I discovered this failure mode big-time: I basically burnt out of flashcarding, because my cards were all much too big.

The memrise blog has some very important info about how one should create cards. Making them ask about only one thing in isolation is one of them.

For example all downloadable Kanji decks basically ask "Kanji -> meaning, kun readings, on readings, nanori readings, translation, example jukugo, example sentence, pronunciation, stroke order, ...", i.e. not atomic at all.

I have instead made my own deck where each Kanji has multiple cards that ask for different pairs of information. One of the important reasons is that I may have more trouble remembering one of those than the others, and that should not make me have to redo those others, since SRS should ask when I'm about to forget.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#206

Post by eska » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 7:03 AM UTC

leppr wrote: post #123

Smaug123 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for most people; almost nobody is going to get a good understanding of something just by reading about it. But if you have already understood something, then Anki can help you solidify that understanding into the long term.

Actually for language learning at least, understanding doesn't need to come before rote memorization. While "stupidly" learning a one-two word definition might not allow you to understand how a word is actually used, it will allow you to get its meaning should you encounter it in native material, delaying understanding to that moment.

Even in science there is a lot of knowledge that doesn't need to be understood. For math subjects that would be all the definitions for example.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#207

Post by eska » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 7:05 AM UTC

wendyshu wrote: post #79

crumbshot wrote: post #74

I tried using Anki but found it far too boring to sustain my interest. Staring at fact flashcards for hours on end just felt like a waste of time. In my experience it was much more useful and engaging to learn by doing things (creating, writing, experimenting) that the facts were related to - then the most necessary facts would become deeply embedded in my memory, with others at just the right level of vagueness nece…

Indeed. I see the value of Anki for rote memorization, e.g. studying for a fact-based exam. But for more reasoning-based domains I'm skeptical.

But remembering facts is exactly what it's for..? And even reasoning-based domains have parts that require rote memorization. E.g. "what is the halting problem?" doesn't require any reasoning or understanding. One needs to know such definitions in order to even start the reasoning part.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#208

Post by eska » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 7:08 AM UTC

JoeDaDude wrote: post #137

For those that would rather use an analog method, you can make a Leitner Box of flash cards, which, if you follow the schedule, works in a similar way as Anki. I find that writing the cards out by hand is the first step in memorizing them. See how to use one in this interactive comic: https://ncase.me/remember/

The issue with that is that I'd be at a 5 digit number of cards by now, certainly wouldn't keep all of those around, and so I'd stop revising old knowledge.

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#209

Post by eska » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 7:13 AM UTC

pelario wrote: post #32

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.

Hi there. I'm also using Anki for Finish vocab, and it had helped me a lot. To the point it does feel like a super power. If you are going to use Anki, it's important to switch the knobs to adapt to what you are learning. I will share some of the things that have worked for me, for Finnish vocab: - Intervals for new cards (until they are considered 'learned'): 1 10 15 50 240. The 240 is critical for me: if I forgot i…

Just ignore the remaining card count and go by time instead. Getting the remaining count to 0 does nothing. Redefine success as "I set out to do Anki for 10 minutes and I did!".

Re: Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition

#210

Post by eska » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

josquindesprez wrote: post #100

farresito wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you. Maybe I should have been more precise with the term 'language learning'. If you find yourself in the situation that you propose, I think you are already at native level in the target language. I'm mostly referring to those that try to go from zero to C1 or C2 with it.

My personal experience is that most people in the language learning community have trouble fitting SRS into their long term workflow because they don't stop to think much about the natural spacing of repetition they get in their other learning processes. The people that popularize things like Anki the hardest are those that built and stuck with their own systems from the start. That's more of a referendum on their pe…

For Japanese I just downloaded a deck with 10 000 words, adapted the display a bit for myself (scraped pronunciations from the web, removed useless info to make them more minimalistic) and just started learning. When I read a book and found a word I wanted to learn it was almost always already in the list, and just needed to be moved to the front of new cards.