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Anki-fy your life

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Re: Anki-fy your life

#101

Post by nohaydeprobleme »

watwut wrote: post #94
nohaydeprobleme wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea gets more interesting depending on your idea of success. If success just means passing the course, you definitely don't need spaced repetition (but then again, you can also maybe get by via cramming two or three days before each test and rushing assignments, though this wouldn't be a good experience). If you define success as doing very well in the course (and remembering what you learn in the long-term), th…

That is the thing ... I don't recall best students doing flashcards all that much in cs, math and physics. I actually associated this more with groups of students who don't understand, so they memorize without understanding. When you understand the concept, it is also much easier to remember the thing.

That's a fair observation. My personal experience has a bias because I knew a math and computer science major who was hardworking and seemed bright at academics, and he was really into Anki.

Knowing him led to my impression that a decent number of math and physics students might have studied with spaced repetition without talking much about it, as he only mentioned it after he saw me studying with the software once. But in hindsight, I agree that it's more likely that math & physics students stick to the learning habits they developed earlier on—often through lots of practice tests and exercises.

Anki seems to be more of a natural progression for people in other fields like biology, where students might develop habits of using flashcards with software like Quizlet, where using software with better study schedules like Anki can be a natural progression.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#102

Post by nirav72 »

This might be a good idea to refresh memory every so often. As an IT guy , sometimes I’ll mentally go blank when I trying to recall some linux command option/switch or some sql query operation. Especially when I’ve used that linux commend or wrote that specific type of query 1000s of times throughout my career. This has become more apparent as I’ve gotten older. (I’m 50 now). So now I’m increasingly relying on search engines to quickly find that info when I face those mental blocks. So I probably should try anki style flash cards.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#103

Post by bluquark »

Macha wrote: post #99
bluquark wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this too, I study with Anki J->E cards and it supercharges my reading skill, helps somewhat my listening skill, and basically does nothing at all for my speaking skill. I was wondering how much adding audio cards or "reversed" E->J cards to my routine might help. Are those variations worth the trouble?

My experience is that doing so has had a minor improvement in my J->E recall, but a major improvement in my E->J recall. If you never intend to write/speak Japanese and just want to build to watching anime or something, I guess you could give it a miss, but I think it's pretty worthwhile. The one caveat with Anki specifically for reversed cards is when you add a bunch of new cards or a new deck and it presents you th…

Thanks!

> unless my textbook omits the kanji because of it being rarely used in the real world, as for some words

I have found this usually proves to be a mistake, textbooks and dictionaries pretend that you need far less kanji than you actually do. Lately I started to mine Anki words from conversations on Japanese twitter and I discovered that everyone casually throw around all kinds of kanji that are not on the Jouyou list and in words every textbook insisted were primarily kana.

I think it might be because modern IMEs have made it much easier to casually use rare-ish kanji. Technology has expanded the range of everyone's recall and writing speed, while the textbooks are still reflecting the world of 20 years ago.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#104

Post by hhjinks »

_43oo wrote: post #89
andersentobias wrote: post #3

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 had a major concussion shortly before my GCSE exams that I'm still very slowly recovering from. I was completely unable to think, let alone study. I never did an IQ test, but I couldn't even listen to a book or stay awake for more than a few hours without a headache. And for a while I couldn't look at a screen or read. I was able to get the second highest grades in the school, with lower than expected grades in onl…

I've never had a concussion, but I wanted to recount my similar experience in school, too. Like you, 5 minutes of math lectures had me dozing off. Really, a lecture in any subject would bore me to sleep. Only when we got practical tasks to work on, like math or physics problems, did my brain wake up and engage with and understand the material. As a result, I excelled in the natural sciences and math, where working on problems took up most of the time, while I did poorly in the more memorization-oriented social sciences and language subjects. Memorization is a skill like any other, and I'm happy I get to work in a field where understanding is more important than memorization.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#105

Post by rahimnathwani »

nohaydeprobleme wrote: post #18

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…

You're right that retrieval practice isn't optimal for all types of knowledge. But not all spaced repetition systems are flashcard systems.

Just under a month ago, I read about 'math academy' here on HN. One thing it does is sort of what it sounds like you envisage: surfacing exercises relating to concepts you might be about to forget.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#106

Post by tastysandwich »

bluquark wrote: post #85
tastysandwich wrote: post #76

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've noticed this too, I study with Anki J->E cards and it supercharges my reading skill, helps somewhat my listening skill, and basically does nothing at all for my speaking skill. I was wondering how much adding audio cards or "reversed" E->J cards to my routine might help. Are those variations worth the trouble?

Personally I never did audio cards (though I did a lot of listening and conversation outside of Anki) or reverse cards for Japanese. My vocab decks were J->E, and my Kanji decks were Kana->Kanji. I always practised writing my answers on the screen using the whiteboard feature.

I think you should strive to keep your decks under 15 minutes total. That means you can complete them in three 5-minute blocks a day. Any longer and I found I would A) miss a deck, meaning I had to catch up the next day; or B) try to rush through them.

I highly recommend trying to engage in conversation as much as possible. In my city (in Australia) I went to "conversation classes". Basically Japanese people wanting to improve their English would meet with Australians wanting to improve their Japanese. It went for an hour, half of which was spent talking in English, and half in Japanese. And if you can only speak a little bit of Japanese, it's totally fine, you can just speak in broken Japanese mixed with English. It was really fun! You'll find opportunities to use your new vocab, and it'll stick much better.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#107

Post by andrem »

yt-sdb wrote: post #51
MichaelNolan wrote: post #41

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…

Do you have a TLDR for that article? It's pretty long and wordy.

This is from Kagi's summarizer:

  Anki is a powerful tool for improving long-term memory.
  Anki is best used in service to a creative project.
  It is important to ask good questions when using Anki.
  Anki is most useful for learning new fields.
  Anki can be used to develop virtuoso skills.
  It is important to avoid orphan questions and yes/no patterns when using Anki.
  Memory is complicated and we should be careful before putting too much faith in any given model.
  Distributed practice is important for maximizing retention.
  Anki can be used to remember non-verbal experiences.
  Anki can be used to memorize APIs and code.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#108

Post by AlexErrant »

rounakdatta wrote: post #52

I'm surprised no one mentioned Memoet ( https://github.com/memoetapp/memoet ). It is a much more modern version of Anki - much more open algorithm, REST APIs and universal interfaces and self-hosted control over one's data.

Anki, imo, already has an open algorithm (that the user can change via plugins), universal interfaces, and is "self-hosted". My eyes perked up at REST api, but it doesn't look like there's a centralized server that hosts shared cards, which is where my mind went.

I'm building https://github.com/AlexErrant/Pentive/ which is basically Anki + Github + Reddit; people can optionally upload their cards for others to download/fork, and the most popular cards rise to the top. It's FLOSS, offline-first, supports plugins and p2p syncing, and is very much a WIP. My proof of concept is almost done though, which demos the critical technologies in a secure way.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#109

Post by wenc »

triyambakam wrote: post #6

Anki (or a Leitner box) is the recommended method from the book "Fluent Forever" After learning one language in school and a few others ad hoc on my own I gave this method a try. I quickly gave up, though, once I discovered Dr Krashen's work on comprehensible input, and how boring and time consuming creating and studying Anki is. Dr Krashen's work says that we learn language when we understand it. I.e. when we receiv…

Learning languages is a statistical problem.

You have to learn the high frequency words/phrases in context (forget 500 most common vocabulary lists -- those don't work). As a child, you do this naturally.

However, there are certain situations where Anki helps. I find it's with words that are useful but don't occur frequently enough to pattern match. For instance, the word "ad hoc" in English -- it occurs in professional speech, but not quite often enough for you to remember what it means in context. This is where Ankifying can really help.

Ankifying commonly confused words/phrases can also help. For instance, in English the word "put" can be used in so many contexts, and many of those contexts don't occur frequently, but can be the source of funny mistakes.

"Put up (with)" and "put out" and "put in" all mean different things in different contexts. Embedding context in your Anki cards will help you recall these contexts.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#110

Post by sowbug »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #63
sowbug wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like exercise. As a software engineer, I'm very unlikely to need to lift heavy things or run long distances. But my body is (probably) healthier long-term if I'm able to do those things. Disclaimer: going through my Anki decks is one of the 50 things on my 10-item to-do list. I don't get to it often enough. But it does work, and I now know how to memorize things I want to remember.

Hmm sure but I feel like my brain gets too much intellectual stimulation if anything from my job and relationships and reading. If I try to do a leetcode at 8pm my brain is just extremely fatigued and tells me to stop. My body on the other hand just sits in a chair for a very large amount of the day so I need to supplement there

There's an old book called The Richest Man In Babylon that has to do with personal finance. One of the key points is to pay yourself first. You have your rent, utility bills, maybe credit-card debt, etc., and even tonight you want to order in, even though it's expensive, because you're way too tired to cook. That's all fine, as long as you first set aside 10% of your paycheck for savings. Although that leaves only 90% left for all the other needs clawing at you, somehow you make it all work.

All too often people tend to their financial needs first, and find there's nothing left for themselves. No surprise most people die broke. Isn't it strange how their lifetime income just happened to almost exactly equal their lifetime expenses? Hmmm....

You might see where I'm going. Why are you giving the best of your time (rather than money) to everyone else, leaving nothing for yourself at the end of the day? Maybe start with just five minutes at the start of the day to pay yourself intellectually. If that works out, make it a habit!

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