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Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

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Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#41

Post by orangepurple »

martindbp wrote: post #38
barking_biscuit wrote: post #26

I mean sure. The trouble is in order to keep the review time per day fixed you need to vary the rate at which you introduce new facts, and as time goes on the interval between when you can afford to introduce new facts will grow to be infinite. The model also doesn't account for how you feel about doing this activity. This includes the pain of not doing reviews for several days and then having to catch up. The probab…

Yeah, I've got 9000 reviews waiting for me in my old Chinese Anki deck, at some point you always fall off the wagon. I've changed my mind several times on SRS going back and forth, and my conclusion is that, for language, I think it's better to split your time with 90% on consuming meaningful input and 10% SRS, because learning in context with real content that you're interested in allows you to encode your memories…

A prioritized queue of stuff to learn may be a better solution than staring at "over 9000" things to review. Such a queue would mean you simply bite off as much as you can chew every day and don't perpetually fall behind, assuming the priority queue has a small degree of randomness and is recomputed daily based on the decay rate of all modeled facts. Do you agree?

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#42

Post by mkl »

k__ wrote: post #32
dls2016 wrote: post #17

I was anti-memorization until I went back to graduate school for mathematics. I had forgotten (or never learned) a lot of things needed to pass qualifying exams. At some point I ran across the spaced repetition idea (maybe from the Wired SuperMemo article [0]) and I gave it a try. I ended up using it to memorize large portions of baby Rudin and Munkres' Topology, as well as some algebra and a bunch of qualifying exam…

Oh, could you go into more detail about math and memoizantion? What did you do? I had the impression, these techniques only work well for languages, but I really would love to get better at math.

Have a look at this article by Michael Nielsen: https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics

Old HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18895613

Or this one: https://cronokirby.com/posts/2021/02/spaced-repetition-for-m...

Hasn't been on HN before so I just posted it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32390730

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#44

Post by orangepurple »

jerf wrote: post #8
jacb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than semi-fallacious - the math doesn't add up, because you run into the Bekenstein bound, which limits how much information you can pack into a volume.

This is why I don't use spaced repetition. The danger of becoming a black hole is just too high. Forgetting things is well known to be highly evolutionary advantageous, because all the critters that remember everything and turned into black holes stopped reproducing. Very dangerous stuff to play with.

The more you learn the more you gain the ability to encode new facts with fewer "bits." Thanks to associative memory. Adults have an advantage in learning in this regard.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#45

Post by therein »

kazinator wrote: post #22
dls2016 wrote: post #17

I was anti-memorization until I went back to graduate school for mathematics. I had forgotten (or never learned) a lot of things needed to pass qualifying exams. At some point I ran across the spaced repetition idea (maybe from the Wired SuperMemo article [0]) and I gave it a try. I ended up using it to memorize large portions of baby Rudin and Munkres' Topology, as well as some algebra and a bunch of qualifying exam…

I remember the exact point in my life when I realized how much difference rote memorization makes. I had the opportunity to write some MC68000 assembly code, at a time which was not too long after having written a complete emulator for it in C. Writing the emulator required me becoming familiar with every single instruction in all of its nuances, and exactly what they all do. So, having that behind me, I sat down to…

> I remember the exact point in my life when I realized how much difference rote memorization makes.

I suspect this might have something to do with neurological development. At least in my experience. Something about memory and recollection "clicked" (not a skill but more a capacity) at a really adult age for me.

Almost similar to being taught calculus after not knowing how most physics formula are derived and then looking back in confusion how you struggled with a straightforward thing.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#46

Post by orangepurple »

Silverback_VII wrote: post #12

there are only a limited amount of things you can memorize because your lifetime is also limited. Piotr Wozniak the creator of supermemo, the first spaced repetition program, talks about it on his site: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/How_much_knowledge_can_human_bra... this guy is a genius in my opinion.

I am in no way affiliated with the guy but you should read the seminal papers published by John R. Anderson.

This guy has been in this game since the 70s

Carnegie Mellon University Professor of Psychology and Computer Science

http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/peoplepages/ja/

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#47

Post by kelseyfrog »

Invictus0 wrote: post #39
kelseyfrog wrote: post #7

This is false if memory's are stored physically in the brain. Unless there is an increase in brain volume, this process will eventually hit the Bekenstein bound. I don't care if the upper bound is "effectively infinite," that's not what the proof claimed.

Undoubtedly the worst comment on all of hacker news

Truly honored.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#48

Post by allenu »

barking_biscuit wrote: post #26

I mean sure. The trouble is in order to keep the review time per day fixed you need to vary the rate at which you introduce new facts, and as time goes on the interval between when you can afford to introduce new facts will grow to be infinite. The model also doesn't account for how you feel about doing this activity. This includes the pain of not doing reviews for several days and then having to catch up. The probab…

That growing backlog is a big issue with this type of scheduling. I think it's one of those almost "unexpected" side-effects of spaced repetition. I mean, if you did the math up front, you should know generally how busy you're going to be over the next few weeks based on how many cards you're reviewing per day, how many new ones are coming, and how you're scoring with each card, but it's not really something people do, nor does the UI show you that.

I wrote my own spaced repetition app (see my profile) and one thing I experimented with is an "ETA" function which goes through your deck and tells you how long before you learn everything "well enough", where "well enough" just means the intervals between all cards is at least some fixed threshold, like one month. I was surprised that even with a few hundred cards and a fixed number of cards reviewed per day, it would still take a few months.

I haven't added the ETA feature yet, but if I do, I think I would need to make sure to show the user how adding new cards affects that target date, and also how reviewing more cards a day or fewer cards a day affects it. I think there's a way to design a nice UI so users feel like they are in control of that end date so they can choose if it's worth it to add new cards or not.

I think a spaced repetition app should also make "falling behind" not feel catastrophic. I think memorizing a smaller set of facts consistently is better than trying to memorize a larger set and then giving up, and an app's UI can probably help to that end.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#50

Post by cehrlich »

I've been using Anki for language learning and it's a superpower. After just over two years I passed an exam that requires a passive vocabulary of about 10,000 words. Other people who grinded harder than me have managed it even faster, some in under a year.

However one big mistake people make is to think an SRS helps you learn. That's not true. It helps you not forget things you've already learned. You still need some real world interaction with the material.

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