81–90 of 233 posts
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t think of anything in my job as a software engineer that I’d benefit from memorizing through flash cards. What are people memorizing exactly?
I absolutely love Anki. A lot of software make empty promises around productivity improvements. Especially in education. Anki is one of those rare tools that genuinely 10x's you over your peers. I used it when studying Japanese and it was a massive help. However, having used it for over 12 years to memorise many different things I have noticed one caveat. If you're not also using what you're memorising outside of Ank…
If you only use Anki and don't do anything else, it's like building scaffolding on an empty lot, and then building more and more scaffolding without using it to build anything else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a TLDR for that article? It's pretty long and wordy.
The article discusses how to create effective prompts that aid in long-term learning using spaced repetition. Matuschak suggests that good prompts should be specific, clear, and concise, and should be designed to encourage active recall rather than passive recognition. He also emphasizes the importance of interleaving, which involves mixing up different types of problems or questions to enhance retention and facilita…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, there's a big distiction to be made here. Knowledge that is primarily conceptual (like almost all of math) generally does not benefit from spaced repetition. The learning involved is understanding -- a new concept may be hard to understand in the first place, but once you get it, you don't really forget it. Or you just need a super-quick refresher if you haven't touched it for a few months. While knowledge tha…
N=1. I found that conceptual knowledge and eureka moments always result in substantial or at least non trivial changes in the way I parse and understand information, so much so that their integration is seamless, automatic and permanent. Otoh, certain stuff that are not particularly important need frequent repetition, eg learning a foreign language that you are not actively using. I am considering using it for leetco…
In that use case, you are much better off reading content in that language and watching content in that language. Vocabulary memorization as isolated activity makes sense only as additional activity if you have additional time on top of that.
I absolutely love Anki. A lot of software make empty promises around productivity improvements. Especially in education. Anki is one of those rare tools that genuinely 10x's you over your peers. I used it when studying Japanese and it was a massive help. However, having used it for over 12 years to memorise many different things I have noticed one caveat. If you're not also using what you're memorising outside of Ank…
I was wondering how much adding audio cards or "reversed" E->J cards to my routine might help. Are those variations worth the trouble?
A major limitation exists for spaced repetition software (e.g. Anki, SuperMemo, or other flashcard-style systems), in my experience using them for several years for long-term memory: it's neither necessary nor sufficient to use this software to learn certain topics. Several excellent physics and math students I worked with have never used spaced repetition software, but were excellent at their studies because they co…
> Several excellent physics and math students I worked with have never used spaced repetition software, but were excellent at their studies because they consistently solved textbook problems. Isn't it the case that only minority of students uses this software or flashcards in general anyway? I mean, of course it is possible to succeed without it, because overwhelming majority of students/learners are not using it.
If you define success as doing very well in the course (and remembering what you learn in the long-term), the idea gets more interesting because more people interested in these outcomes use flashcard systems. Anki is especially popular among medical students, so it's a tempting idea to consider that applying spaced repetition to subjects like mathematics or physics can also be useful.
To some people studying math or physics, the software can potentially be a nice aide, but in my individual experience, I understood and remembered concepts better by spending more time practicing problems and doing sample tests, versus spending more time using spaced repetition software.
I absolutely love Anki. A lot of software make empty promises around productivity improvements. Especially in education. Anki is one of those rare tools that genuinely 10x's you over your peers. I used it when studying Japanese and it was a massive help. However, having used it for over 12 years to memorise many different things I have noticed one caveat. If you're not also using what you're memorising outside of Ank…
This is also what I'd call the classic issue with Duolingo. Or rather, one of them, considering that the app has all sorts of issues. If you use nothing but Duolingo you'll plateau very quickly. It's probably "okay" as a casual side spaced-repetition learning tool—when you're learning languages you generally want to pull from several different resources, and learn with different tools anyway. But don't make the mista…
Yep. I agree with measured criticisms of Anki even while feeling the app is really useful if you use it well. Whereas Duolingo isn't worth bothering with at all. It's purely optimized to maximize engagement/revenue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also what I'd call the classic issue with Duolingo. Or rather, one of them, considering that the app has all sorts of issues. If you use nothing but Duolingo you'll plateau very quickly. It's probably "okay" as a casual side spaced-repetition learning tool—when you're learning languages you generally want to pull from several different resources, and learn with different tools anyway. But don't make the mista…
> Or rather, one of them, considering that [Duolingo] has all sorts of issues. Yep. I agree with measured criticisms of Anki even while feeling the app is really useful if you use it well. Whereas Duolingo isn't worth bothering with at all. It's purely optimized to maximize engagement/revenue.
Unless you want to compete in Jeopardy or something, why bother with ""uploading"" static chunks of information to your wetware? Language learning aside. When categorizing notes to be remembered, I think it's good to think in terms of memory retreival, not memory storage. In other words, not to become an "archiever", because you probably want to evolve your ideas by linking them together in your own unique way -- uni…
I was able to get the second highest grades in the school, with lower than expected grades in only two subjects (and dropping one, further maths), because of Anki. Because Anki does not require understanding, only sufficient repetition, and I had a lot of time on my hands, I was able to continuously do flashcards for hours on end while maths work would have me struggling to stay awake within 5 minutes. I could remember facts without understanding them.
The exams were ~3 months after it happened, which gave me time to improve, plus during the actual exam a combination of painkillers, extra time, rest breaks, exam technique, and adrenaline allowed me to put together a plausible answer with the disconnected facts I had learnt in the months preceeding that I just about got the mark. As a sidenote - it's quite incredible how adrenaline can temporarily improve brain injuries, with the downside that the moment it went I was completely exhausted.
Every subject bar maths I got the grades I wanted or just below, because Anki allowed me to memorise without learning.
(These subjects were: Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Lit, English Lang, History, Computer Science, Digital something, Creative Media Production (didn't do exam), Further Maths (dropped).)
Now, I would prefer not to revise using solely Anki, and I think the fact a braindead student with memorised facts (and good exam technique) was able to get good grades says a lot about the British education system. It also says a lot about Anki, and just how effective it is.
Side note, because I'm tired of hearing drivel on HN:
My life being (permanently?) ruined was entirely preventable, all it would have taken is a little less empathy, a little less second chances, for violent barbarians who damage everyone around them. When people preach empathy they forget about the human cost of allowing inherently violent, destructive people to continue their actions.
If you're one of those people who thinks grammar schools are bad, restorative "justice" is the future, and we should prioritise those who hurt and destroy over those who want to learn and build: Your actions and your ideology have ugly consequences beyond your selfish delusion of making the world better through being nice and kind and the power of love - that belongs in novels, not policy.
I'm a huge fan of spaced repetition and Anki. I strongly believe that most people's professional lives would be improved by using it. There is a huge amount of information that falls into the zone of it's needed often enough that not knowing it is a pain, but it's not needed often enough that you would "naturally" remember it. I've yet to find anything else that only takes 10 to 20 minutes a day that has a higher ROI…
It seems to me that pretty much anything has better ROI then 10-20 minutes of pure rote memorization a day. Plus, keeping in 10-20 minutes a day requires separate skill on itself. Anki has a way of taking over and expanding the time it requires.
I wouldn't describe my use of Anki as "rote memorization". Though certainly some people use it that way. There is a big difference between blindly putting raw and unfamiliar facts into an SRS, and using an SRS to remember things you have learned and understand. It's the second case that pays large dividends over time.