Effective Spaced Repetition • Hacker News Board

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#101

Post by TheRealPomax » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

n8henrie wrote: post #82

TheRealPomax wrote: post #76

This could do with some non-serif fontage. Effective learning includes having a typeface that doesn't get in the way of reading at smaller pointsize for a large segment of the population.

TIL -- I thought serif was generally supposed to be easier to read. How is this kind of thing studied, and what kind of outcomes suggest "easier to read"? Speed? Recall? Subjective? What proportion of the population are we talking about, roughly? Is it even enough that one should consider providing both a serif and a sans version of their content? Serious question.

Worldwide, at least 10% of the audience (but depending on your specific demographic, much higher) which is a crazy significant number (for contrast: your users are three times more likely to have some form of dyslexia than they are likely to be using Firefox).

For anyone with (partial) dyslexia the serifs are information-murder. https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-d...

But also note that font size and spacing matters a lot: at 16px with 24px line spacing, this is super hard to read. Change that to font-size 20 with the same 24px spacing, and this read perfectly fine.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#102

Post by koofdoof » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

MisterPea wrote: post #90

Having tried spaced repetition methods for studying for swe interviews, I can concur that it is the most effective way for me learn. It does require an intense amount of discipline though, so wonder how well it will work for me in execution for hobby learning.

Are there any good premade decks you could recommend? Or particular topics you found well suited to spaced repetition?

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#103

Post by sureglymop » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

submeta wrote: post #77

A question to the experienced Anki users: The recommendation is to learn before you memorize. Many times I hack the infos (from an article) right into Anki. Now if it‘d want to review the infos in the Anki app, that totally destroys my stats. What are some of you doing? Extract the info into some other tool, review the infos there and then quiz yourself in Aki?

I have a similar issue. I create cards for the subject I need to study, then I study it all at once in a custom study session.

I then go to the exams but how do I continue afterwards? Like what are the best settings to retain all the information after that? And how do I make sure that I'm not destroying those settings when I need to study before an exam again?

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#104

Post by cafemachiavelli » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

tiagod wrote: post #91

>A common failure mode (and I did this more than once, before I got the hang of it) is to use Anki for two weeks, then drop it, and pick it back up six months later only to find you have 600 cards due for review. This is not encouraging, and it defeats the point of spaced repetition, which is to review the cards on the intervals the algorithm chooses. >I don’t have much advice in this area, except that if you have pe…

The only thing that worked for me (also ADHD) is to have fixed study sessions, typically in the morning ("Kanji before breakfast") or during my train commute.

Beyond that, I wouldn't worry about backlog too much. I use a custom deck that gives me my maximally doable number of cards per day and completely ignore the rest. It's not like the actual repetition frequency is critical - many people change those settings quite drastically and still manage to memorize their cards fine.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#105

Post by samus » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

tiagod wrote: post #91

>A common failure mode (and I did this more than once, before I got the hang of it) is to use Anki for two weeks, then drop it, and pick it back up six months later only to find you have 600 cards due for review. This is not encouraging, and it defeats the point of spaced repetition, which is to review the cards on the intervals the algorithm chooses. >I don’t have much advice in this area, except that if you have pe…

If you don't touch it for that long, just throw away the scorefile and start from new. It probably doesn't fit the degree you actually remember any of the things that you learned.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#106

Post by samus » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

rjh29 wrote: post #16

fwlr wrote: post #3

”Individual cards should be extremely brief, but your deck as a whole can be as repetitive as you want.” Huh! I struggled with using Anki for pretty much this exact reason, always spent too much mental energy figuring out the “correct” number of cards for a given topic. But the author makes a good point here, if there’s too many cards on a certain topic you’ll just hit “I remember” on the repetitive cards and the alg…

I'm a big fan of making lots of cards, like you say you can just hit Easy and send them into next year, or conversely if you keep forgetting them and they're using up lots of time, just suspend or delete them. When I couldn't remember a particular kanji in Japanese I used to make lots of cards that featured that kanji at the same time, and usually I'd review them all the same time, it's sort of cheating but it always…

It's actually the correct way to make that work. Some Hanzi and Kanji are really abstract and are best learned by associating it with multiple related concepts. Each can have dozens of very distinctive meanings.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#107

Post by awhitty » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #60

I need to memorize the shapes of seven modes on the guitar. (A mode is kind of like a scale.) The image here shows them starting from F: https://www.anyonecanplayguitar.co.uk/three-note-per-string-... Is this a good fit for this technique? I'm not sure how to decompose it further than "G Dorian." I'm also not sure if the time would be better spent just playing them more.

Hey, I spent some spare time noodling on a specialized tool for fretboard flashcards a few months back. I haven’t built decks for learning modes yet, but I’d be curious to hear what sort of format you’d find useful and I’m happy to give it a whirl. You can check it out at https://awhitty.me/fretcards/

I’d be really happy to hear any other feedback as well. So far I’ve implemented a crude per-session spaced repetition algorithm, but I’ve had a mind to build more decks, offline support, local-first spaced repetition, and some extra doodads.

I agree with other commenters - playing is the best way to get this stuff truly dialed in. Have fun with it, too! Drilling scales saps energy, imo. Best to eat a balanced diet.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#108

Post by Jtsummers » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:54 PM UTC

sureglymop wrote: post #103

submeta wrote: post #77

A question to the experienced Anki users: The recommendation is to learn before you memorize. Many times I hack the infos (from an article) right into Anki. Now if it‘d want to review the infos in the Anki app, that totally destroys my stats. What are some of you doing? Extract the info into some other tool, review the infos there and then quiz yourself in Aki?

I have a similar issue. I create cards for the subject I need to study, then I study it all at once in a custom study session. I then go to the exams but how do I continue afterwards? Like what are the best settings to retain all the information after that? And how do I make sure that I'm not destroying those settings when I need to study before an exam again?

https://docs.ankiweb.net/filtered-decks.html

You can use filtered decks and set them up so they don't alter the schedule of the cards when they're "returned" to their actual regular deck. Useful for a cram session before an exam where you don't want to actually alter the regular study schedule.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#109

Post by cpburns2009 » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

atahanacar wrote: post #65

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making your own cards is a very important step

No. As a med student who uses Anki for basically everything, this is plain wrong. The time spent on making cards is better spent on studying. Premade cards (Anking in this case) have relevant pages from multiple sources, relevant histology/gross photos and additional notes for every card, and all cards are tagged with their corresponding chapters in multiple textbooks. If I spent time trying to do something similar (…

My wife gave up trying to use Anki in med school because it worked against her. There's no way to go through a whole deck in one sitting. Anki might be useful for a few light cards every day but it's useless for the long study sessions demanded by med school.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#110

Post by examplary_cable » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

tiagod wrote: post #91

>A common failure mode (and I did this more than once, before I got the hang of it) is to use Anki for two weeks, then drop it, and pick it back up six months later only to find you have 600 cards due for review. This is not encouraging, and it defeats the point of spaced repetition, which is to review the cards on the intervals the algorithm chooses. >I don’t have much advice in this area, except that if you have pe…

The issue you're having is due to the fact that Anki "Accumulates" cards if you skip one day, which can build up and create such a large amount of scheduled cards for a day that you end up dropping the thing. I'm working on a spaced repetition algorithm that solves this issue by letting you review when you have time and letting you skip the days you can't do the reviews.