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Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

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Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#81

Post by ok_dad »

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…

Do you have any notes on how you studied? I’m interested in going back to math grad school but forgot everything from undergrad, basically.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#82

Post by tastysandwich »

Based on my own experience, a caveat is that you need to be applying what you're learning outside of flashcards. Otherwise, it's like your brain has different memory banks for different contexts, and you'll remember everything when using your flashcards, but a real-world scenario will come up and you'll forget.

I went from zero Japanese to JLPT N2 in just a few years and I attribute a great deal of that to Anki. However, I was also frequently talking in Japanese, and reading/writing in Japanese. I was constantly using what I was learning.

Maybe an analogy is, Anki is like steroids, but you still need to go to the gym. :P

I don't study Japanese at all anymore and I have very little exposure to the language. But I still do my flashcards. I've noticed my recall is excellent when doing the flashcards, but if I see some Japanese written on a billboard, or think to myself "how do I say this again...", I struggle to recall even things that are in my flashcard packs.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#83

Post by Timpy »

borroka wrote: post #56
cehrlich wrote: post #50

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 som…

>> It helps you not forget things you've already learned. The argument is quite weak when we discuss learning words in a foreign language. You learn that lunch is "almuerzo" in Spanish, but is it learning or just memorization/association? To me the lines are blurred, even at first sight of the word. I used Anki myself to learn foreign languages and it is tremendously effective for words and short sentences too. I use…

I did Anki religiously every day for 2 years, I managed to internalize a bunch of facts about Japanese and no skills. I knew tons of vocab words and grammar points but I couldn't make a sentence in the heat of the moment to save my life. I know memorization is a part of the game, but it's not the whole game. It's like learning a bunch of music theory without actually touching an instrument.

I am learning Mandarin now and my approach is completely different. Speaking and listening are the most important, I'm letting muscle memory of mouth (and sometimes gesturing tones with my hand) be my memorization technique. Six months-ish in and I can already express myself in rudimentary ways, it's way better than my Japanese was in that time frame. I have some Mandarin Anki decks that I do in the cracks of my day but I never finish my daily cards anymore and I don't spend a lot of time on it. I'll schedule an italki lesson or listen some speak-and-repeat courses instead.

Memorizing the notes in a song isn't learning to play music, memorizing a bunch of vocabulary isn't learning a foreign language.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#84

Post by qumpis »

xkfm wrote: post #25
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…

That Supermemo article in Wired hooked me. I still remember where I was when I read it and the feeling of reading it. I still use Supermemo daily, and it's one of the programs keeping on Windows. Anki (and every other SRS program I've tried) just doesn't compare as soon as you move beyond a list of flashcards. That said, having used Supermemo for over a decade at this point, the hardest thing about SRS is deciding wh…

What's your use case? In my case, obsidian + anki seems to do very well (I can keep a decent amount of context in my cards) for math/CS topics.

Can you also give an example how you benefit from your workflow, and say a bit more why Anki wouldn't be sufficient? Wouldn't keeping a track of articles and making cards in Anki achieve the same purpose, or is there something else? Of course the implementation matters, and having a system for paper-reading and revising by itself is a nice feature.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#85

Post by bitexploder »

ozim wrote: post #31
snowpiercer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think you actually did well in your exams because you really understood it and not because you blindly memorized it ?

That is false dichotomy that is running around. To really understand something first you blindly memorize - but that is not enough, once you do examples and exercises using what you blindly memorized you get to understand things quicker, a lot quicker. Not memorizing stuff and figuring things as you go is mostly recipe for disappointment. Like in chess - people think that chess players are somehow super intelligent -…

Memorization only works well if your approach leads to chunking. They have done studies on chess players specifically, which supports what you are saying. Masters are no better than a beginner at memorizing a random chess board. This critical mass of memorization, when finally encoded into chunks is what I think a lot of people are describing as the “aha” of memorizing to conquer complex topics. So it isn’t really the blind memorization, but the process of learning and getting information and concepts into coherent and related chunks.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#86

Post by dls2016 »

snowpiercer wrote: post #29
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…

Don't you think you actually did well in your exams because you really understood it and not because you blindly memorized it ?

My (entirely uninformed… though I am a “doctor” har har) theory is that some sort of compression occurs in the brain. I also wrote out the answers to my flash cards by hand. I feel like these actions accelerate the compression process.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#87

Post by thrown_22 »

orangepurple wrote: post #41
martindbp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It doesn't help.

The rate at which you can add new items is the inverse of the review period. What you're effectively doing is increasing the review interval, but you will still run into the fact that the number of items you can remove from the queue is finite. Eventually you will have only interesting items on the end of the queue equal to the number of items you can review. You're now back at square one: you don't have the time to add any new items.

The only way to deal with this is to review items a finite number of times and hope for the best.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#88

Post by dls2016 »

ok_dad wrote: post #81
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…

Do you have any notes on how you studied? I’m interested in going back to math grad school but forgot everything from undergrad, basically.

Two articles I wrote at the time which hold up surprisingly well:

https://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2010/12/28/spaced-math-re...

https://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2011/03/10/space-math-rep...

And an example of some of my cards:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z714xpq36nvn3o1/rudin.pdf?dl=0

If I'm being honest, I went overboard. Like I said, I literally memorized entire books. Entering cards into the system was the most difficult part. But it absolutely works! Had I stayed in academia, I would have loved to developed a set of flash cards to go along with course material.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#89

Post by dls2016 »

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.

See my other comment.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#90

Post by borroka »

Timpy wrote: post #83
borroka wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It helps you not forget things you've already learned. The argument is quite weak when we discuss learning words in a foreign language. You learn that lunch is "almuerzo" in Spanish, but is it learning or just memorization/association? To me the lines are blurred, even at first sight of the word. I used Anki myself to learn foreign languages and it is tremendously effective for words and short sentences too. I use…

I did Anki religiously every day for 2 years, I managed to internalize a bunch of facts about Japanese and no skills. I knew tons of vocab words and grammar points but I couldn't make a sentence in the heat of the moment to save my life. I know memorization is a part of the game, but it's not the whole game. It's like learning a bunch of music theory without actually touching an instrument. I am learning Mandarin now…

I agree with the comment, but my point was about understanding and memorizing words, not becoming fluent in a language. Listening, speaking, and memorizing words and grammar rules are all necessary to become passable or fluent in a foreign language. I always jot down words and strive to memorize the phrases or idioms of native speakers. Then, there are ups and downs, one day I sound like Obama, another day I sound like someone who started learning the language two weeks ago. It's all part of the business.
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