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Anki-fy your life

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Re: Anki-fy your life

#171

Post by komali2 »

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.

I live in Taiwan and this is a constant presumption by other immigrants here - oh, the taiwanese aren't good at critical thinking, their schools just have them memorize everything, there's no imagination, they have no ability to self start or self direct.

There's some grains of truth to aspects of the culture resisting individualism (which isn't inherently negative I don't think, as distasteful as that may sound to Americans), but not only is this a mischaracterization, it's also missing the upsides of having a population that all has stashed in their heads a whole shitload of math and science that enables them in all sorts of interesting ways.

For example, on a construction team, any single member is capable of more geometric reasoning than the same team in the usa (in my limited experience working with construction in both countries), making for faster, more accurate, and cheaper builds. Or, when bringing a software engineer up to speed with a new framework or whatever, I find they retain mundane details remarkably quickly, probably by having a well honed memorization method. That's really nice for when you're trying to think of how to implement something and basically the entire library documentation is just at hand in the noggin.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#172

Post by i2ksbu2b »

yCombLinks wrote: post #153
hyperbovine wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The 2 aren't mutually exclusive. If you give 2 middle schoolers a test and one knows all of his time tables by rote, he's going to fly circles around the "kid with deep understanding" that's writing out the multiples manually.

Is what you are measuring actually meaningful?

Also you dont need to write them out, you can still calculate it in your head "manually".

I think second student may have easier time to apply knowledge on things like 4 * 2,75.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#173

Post by jodrellblank »

emodendroket wrote: post #166
hackernewds wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> “I guess most of us can understand a sentence like "a string is an immutable sequence of characters," quickly read it, and move on.”

Can we? In the context of learning a new unfamiliar programming language… is it saying there is a string type or is it telling you that there isn’t a string type but only a sequence of characters? Like APL a string is an array of characters not its own type but in C# [string] is a thing and if you iterate it you get [char] type. In Prolog a string is traditionally a linked list of ASCII code numbers, there isn’t a string type or a char type … but there is still a string to chars conversion function. So is the sentence telling you that there is a char type? In Python a string is iterable but you get strings of length one for the characters rather than chars. But wait what about Unicode and surrogate pairs and glyphs, where does “sequence of characters” fit on those things in this language?

What does ‘sequence’ mean in this unfamiliar language - is it saying strings are an array or a list, or that sequence is a trait or behaviour which generalises over many types? What is immutable specifically, sequences or strings or characters or all data? What are the consequences of that? In APL you can assign into an array even though they are immutable (it will be copied behind the scenes) so it seems like it is an implementation detail you can ignore but wait that means dropping one character from the front copies the rest of the string in memory (slow) whereas in other languages trying to change a string at all is an error - compile time or runtime? You might think Prolog can do it if strings are linked lists but surprise, Prolog lists are immutable.

So if you read that sentence and move on, what have you really learned about the new language? In the context of this thread how would you Anki-fy the concepts immutable or sequence or string?

Re: Anki-fy your life

#174

Post by komali2 »

> The challenges of using Anki to store facts about friends and family: I've experimented with using Anki to store (non-sensitive!) questions about friends and family. It works well for things like “Is [my friend] a vegan?” But my use has run somewhat aground on thornier questions. For instance, suppose I talk with a new friend about their kids, but have never met those kids. I could put in questions like “What is the name of [my friend's] eldest child?” Or, if we'd chatted about music, I might put in: “What is a musician [my friend] likes?”

I was on a boat and learned someone's name, and said to her "I'll try to remember it, but-" she cut me off and said "stop telling yourself you're bad at remembering names, everyone does that, then they can't remember names!" I'm aware of the self helpy concept of self actualization and all that and couldn't help but internally roll my eyes a bit, but it did make me think: damn, I really am bad at remembering names, seriously bad, worse than anyone I've ever met in fact. Someone will approach me at s grocery store, call me by name, and start reminiscing with me about things we did together that clearly were fond memories for them, and throughout the whole conversation I'll have no memory of the person's name or any of the things they're talking about. This has happened greater than 20 times in my life, so I was worried I maybe had early onset Alzheimer's or something, but two psychologists have told me It's probably just a symptom of my severe ADHD.

So I put my foot down, fuck it, I'm not forgetting people anymore. I made an anki deck on my phone with three fields: picture of their face, name, and basic info about them, maybe times we've hung out etc. The "question" side is their face, answer is name and description.

I started throwing in people immediately after I met them and backfilling people from Facebook events and Line chat groups. I'd lift their profile pics or whatever else.

It's pretty fuckin creepy to be honest and if I ever get caught reviewing the deck I'll be really embarrassed, but it's working extraordinarily well, and I haven't had the far more embarrassing moment of forgetting that the person I'm talking to went to a baseball game with me once or whatever. Some might say "well clearly that person and event just didn't matter to you if you don't naturally remember them," to which I say I will genuinely forget entirely what I did yesterday sometimes. Something's messed up with my memory and anki is able to fix it, just like daily outline journaling every night has fixed the thing where I'll just forget an entire day.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#175

Post by emodendroket »

jodrellblank wrote: post #173
emodendroket wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> “ I guess most of us can understand a sentence like "a string is an immutable sequence of characters," quickly read it, and move on. ” Can we? In the context of learning a new unfamiliar programming language… is it saying there is a string type or is it telling you that there isn’t a string type but only a sequence of characters? Like APL a string is an array of characters not its own type but in C# [string] is a t…

Do you think all those questions are someone who looks at the sentence and has no idea what it means would even think to ask? I don't know how you'd convert the knowledge to flash cards most effectively; my point is you have a ton of knowledge committed to memory about programming concepts and that allows you to more easily assimilate new knowledge, because you aren't having to spend time wrestling with the basics to make heads or tails of the topic you actually meant to learn about. It's a kind of yak shaving for the mind that you get stuck doing otherwise.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#176

Post by graboid »

trane_project wrote: post #129
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…

I've been working on https://github.com/trane-project/trane for the past year or so, mostly to get around these limitations. I tried to find a way to use Anki or another existing software to aid my music practice, but I couldn't get it to work. Some ways in which it's different: - Dependencies are core to the system. For example, if I am learning a music piece, I want to start by learning small sections and only move…

Cool project!

A quick question that I could not answer from reading the Github page: How married is the learning process to those "courses" you describe? If I have a topic X and start with 0 knowledge about it, could I use trane to learn it if there is no premade course yet? I assume to create a course about it, I would have to have quite some knowledge about the topic already, to be able to think of exercises and rate them in terms of difficulty/hierarchy.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#177

Post by bigDinosaur »

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.

You are completely correct. It is very rarely worth memorising information you do not understand, doubly so if it's information divorced from the rest of your knowledge (e.g. memorising the first ten digits of pi is useful perhaps in extreme niche cases, but is vastly more useless if you've done it without even knowing what pi actually is). The creator of Supermemo notes this: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Do_not_memorize_before_you_under...

On the other hand, memorising things you do understand is a time saving measure at the point of memory access as well as something that allows you to play with concepts/ideas/facts in your head while doing anything else, which I've found to be quite useful. You do have to be selective about it, and software like Anki shouldn't be used to build memories for everything (for one, it can be so boring that you'll be turned off of SRS entirely if you overuse it).

Re: Anki-fy your life

#178

Post by siva7 »

kneebonian wrote: post #22

I'll just throw out I've used Anki ever since I started it and haven't failed a knowledge test since I started doing it. Including passing my HAM test with only using Anki and the questions for 72 hours.

Word of caution to other readers: Don't use Anki for cramming. Especially not if you didn't learn and understand the material before cramming.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#179

Post by leobg »

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.

Ha! I used it in law school. Actually wrote my “cards” down on a palm pilot during classes using the funny stylus it had. Professor later told me he had wondered what I was doing with this odd device. Until it dawned on him that I was taking notes! Other people paid hundreds for exam prep courses. For me, SuperMemo (the “app” as it was called back then, before “apps” were a thing) was all I needed.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#180

Post by watwut »

yCombLinks wrote: post #153
hyperbovine wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The 2 aren't mutually exclusive. If you give 2 middle schoolers a test and one knows all of his time tables by rote, he's going to fly circles around the "kid with deep understanding" that's writing out the multiples manually.

If the test is purely about multiplying small numbers and the other kid don't know multiply, maybe.

If the test is designed to test understanding, then the kid with deep understanding will win.

By your definition, multiplying kid is faster at multiplying, but don't really know what he is doing outside of memorized situation. And at other is better at everything else.

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