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Anki-fy your life

abouttolearn.substack.com

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Re: Anki-fy your life

#161

Post by [deleted] »

hackernewds wrote: post #152
NiloCK wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have this weird disdain for memorization. Memorization is the same as knowing. Can you imagine that there have been points in your job that would have gone smoother if you'd known more?

Knowing is not the same as understanding though. For example, I do not see any value of winning the spelling bee in real life applications. This is actually widely accepted as the downrisk in Asian education systems - the emphasis on rote learning vs practical application.

[deleted]

Re: Anki-fy your life

#162

Post by SkyPuncher »

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…

I have the exact opposite opinion. My wife is a doctor.

Anki was insanely popular in med school. It was certainly helpful for passing exams, but it's all stuff that can be easily looked up. It's all simple, basic facts.

It's far better to learn the theory, then fill in the details with easy reference.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#163

Post by travisjungroth »

fasterik wrote: post #147
NiloCK wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have this weird disdain for memorization. Memorization is the same as knowing. Can you imagine that there have been points in your job that would have gone smoother if you'd known more?

You can memorize every note of a difficult piano piece, but that doesn't mean you know how to play it well.

Yes, memory is a necessary but not sufficient component of learning. "Piano playing" seems like a really poor example to argue against the value of memorization.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#164

Post by travisjungroth »

glenngillen wrote: post #149
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…

Could you share some examples of the type of stuff you’ve added to this system that’s had that kind of professional pay off? I’m familiar with the approach, but I suspect part of the reason I’ve not been able to maintain a long term habit is I’ve always used it for things like learning a language. Which is great, but doesn’t have the kind of process re-enforcing payoff given I rarely get to apply it. And I’m drawn a…

Here's an example: statistical methods. I'm a software engineer and was going to start helping with analysis tooling. Having characteristics and example use cases for many statistical methods helped me work faster and make better choices than needing to look things up.

Generalized, cases where you can choose from one of a few options/technique and this choice is an expression of your professional opinion are good. What you memorize are the attributes of the options that you tend to make the choices on. It's hard to get across (and impossible if people don't want to believe it) the difference in speed/quality/accuracy that comes from having 3 attributes of 10 options at instant recall versus a few that come to mind right away and then more if you remember to try.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#165

Post by emodendroket »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #162
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…

I have the exact opposite opinion. My wife is a doctor. Anki was insanely popular in med school. It was certainly helpful for passing exams, but it's all stuff that can be easily looked up. It's all simple, basic facts. It's far better to learn the theory, then fill in the details with easy reference.

In theory. But in practice having a lot of facts memorized not only saves you from having to look things up but actually makes you get more out of the things you do look up! See: https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/LookItUpSpring2000.p...

Besides that, the original task Anki was designed for was language learning, and you can't have much of a conversation if every sentence requires multiple dictionary lookups.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#166

Post by emodendroket »

hackernewds wrote: post #152
NiloCK wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have this weird disdain for memorization. Memorization is the same as knowing. Can you imagine that there have been points in your job that would have gone smoother if you'd known more?

Knowing is not the same as understanding though. For example, I do not see any value of winning the spelling bee in real life applications. This is actually widely accepted as the downrisk in Asian education systems - the emphasis on rote learning vs practical application.

> For example, I do not see any value of winning the spelling bee in real life applications.

You might if you were an editor. I guess your job probably doesn't have much to do with that so you see it as pointless but there is a different sphere of knowledge where having various things committed to memory would save you time. For instance, if we're interested in learning a new programming language, I guess most of us can understand a sentence like "a string is an immutable sequence of characters," quickly read it, and move on. If you weren't familiar with the concepts in that sentence you'd burn a lot more time before making heads or tails of it.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#167

Post by emodendroket »

atian wrote: post #141
NiloCK wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have this weird disdain for memorization. Memorization is the same as knowing. Can you imagine that there have been points in your job that would have gone smoother if you'd known more?

I don’t believe them to be the same. I have friends who repeat words to me GPT style, that I know them to be imprecise in the spirit of the discussion.

Then they didn't really memorize them properly, did they?

Re: Anki-fy your life

#168

Post by emodendroket »

fasterik wrote: post #147
NiloCK wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have this weird disdain for memorization. Memorization is the same as knowing. Can you imagine that there have been points in your job that would have gone smoother if you'd known more?

You can memorize every note of a difficult piano piece, but that doesn't mean you know how to play it well.

Learning to play a song or to play from sheet music is, itself, a task that is well suited for rote learning. There's really no way out of repetitive practice if your goal is to learn to play a musical instrument.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#169

Post by emodendroket »

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…

Sure, even for the task that it was designed for, learning Japanese, I mostly pursued a method of just writing stuff in a notebook over and over when I was getting that degree. But the specifics of Anki itself are less important an observation than the main one: despite the widespread conviction that rote learning is pointless it is actually extremely helpful to a wide number of fields of endeavor.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#170

Post by emodendroket »

hyperbovine wrote: post #142
yCombLinks wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree. The pivot completely away from rote memorization in public schools is a mistake. Being able to immediately conjure math facts for example without having to use higher level concentration makes the next level of thought easier to access. Rote memorization is currently undervalued.

Oh man I could not disagree more. “Math facts” don’t require any sort of conjuring, in fact cease to seem mystical at all, once you have a deep understanding of the material. Take your favorite math textbook—do you seriously think the author wrote all that down by rote memorization? Of course not: it came naturally as a byproduct of study. Memorization for the sake of memorizing is the worst possible way to learn mat…

How do you have a "deep understanding of the material" without committing any of it to memory?
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