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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#31

Post by oliwary »

bearjaws wrote: post #6

Spaced repetition has been all the rage for 20 years now. Dozens of apps, thousands of lectures, and it turns out its not really a silver bullet. There's nothing really wrong with it, it's just that people tend to fall off the same way they do on any other education pattern. A couple years ago I was thinking "If Google and Apple really cared about kids they would make a spaced repetition unlock system", where by you…

I think this is a brilliant idea! Surprised nobody has built it yet. I would definitely use it.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#32

Post by yellow_lead »

entropie wrote: post #2

Pretty OT: A few month ago I tried to marry my simple note system with anki. My goal was to be able to send simple front/backside cards to an api and it would get integrated and I can use it immediately. Ofc, when I edit cards via my notes-backend, the cards in anki should update too. Long story short: not possible with anki. It took like an entire day for me to realize its just not possible without diving deep into…

I looked into this before too. Ankiweb (the place where cards created on Anki sync to) does not provide a rest API. The service is free though. It makes sense they may not want automated clients.

There is an implementation of their sync server, which you can self host. And it has a REST API

https://github.com/dsnopek/anki-sync-server

I think I ran into a blocker with it not supporting something I needed last time I tried to use it though.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#33

Post by Pooge »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #19
montebicyclelo wrote: post #10

Language vocab seems a good use case. What other things are people here using spaced repition for?

There's an anki deck built from the jeopardy archive with 400,000 questions, so I'm studying trivia that way. I enjoy trivia.

I think I've used that deck for a few weeks. Mind sharing the link so I may take a look at it? :)

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#35

Post by SamPatt »

montebicyclelo wrote: post #10

Language vocab seems a good use case. What other things are people here using spaced repition for?

A few uses for me:

• Memorizing Geoguessr metas. Made it to Master I rank this way.

• Memorizing new words. When I come across a word I don't know, I make a new flashcard for it.

• Memorizing things about people. My wife's favorite ice cream flavors, which spices each of my children dislikes, etc.

Anything I want to memorize but wouldn't be exposed to frequently enough in my day to day life. Flashcard review takes only a few minutes each day.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#36

Post by patapong »

montebicyclelo wrote: post #10

Language vocab seems a good use case. What other things are people here using spaced repition for?

I used it all throughout my legal studies, for remembering legal terms, concepts, tests and any other thing I had to learn. It served me very nicely.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#37

Post by cjauvin »

Pooge wrote: post #13

I'm sorry, I didn't read the article but I thought my experience would be a good anecdote. I've used Anki for multiple years and learned around 18'000 Japanese words. It's difficult to say but I'd say I've learned how to read around 5'000 kanji. When I studied in Japan, my kanji reading—don't mix that up with comprehension !—was way above everyone else's. And most of my classmates were either Korean or Chinese. That'…

There's a surprising gulf between word recognition and overall sentence comprehension. I'm learning Farsi with a combination of Anki and Youtube videos and sometimes I find myself in the weird state where I recognize every word in a sentence, but yet cannot assemble its overall meaning.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#38

Post by dustincoates »

cenamus wrote: post #20
arrowsmith wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Anki but it’s an archetypal example of “designed by an engineer”. It’s powerful, with a lot of depth to its features - but it’s also hideous, clunky and unintuitive, and it takes a long time to figure out how to use it effectively. An HN-reading tech nerd can probably figure it out, but your average Duolingomaxxing normie? No chance.

Sorry, but what's clunky about it? All buttons in reach of your thumb on the mobile app and usable keybindings on desktop? Is there not enough useless whitespace around every button?

I'll give you one example. Occasionally, I come across something that needs to be not be shown anymore. I realize that the question wasn't a good one, or my template spit out something empty. Now, do I suspend card or suspend note? Every single time, I have to go search for which is the right one. (Okay, okay, maybe user error, but still.)

Another example until recently was the extremely useful image occlusion enhanced add-on. Can you easily tell the difference between overlapping and nonoverlapping? At least they renamed those settings to the much more intuitive "Hide One , Reveal All" and "Hide All, Reveal One."

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#39

Post by SirHumphrey »

I find with spaced repetition that it works really well for some well-known things like vocabulary (EDIT: well-known meant as "spaced repetition is well-known to work for this use-case, not well-known as "the subject is well understood"), medical etc. but for everything else it becomes a struggle for a long time.

I have been trying for years to fined a way to use it for mathematics and physics - with the former being more of a focus and didn't really get anywhere. For definitions it works, but it's quite hard to write proofs in a way where there is a short obvious memorization based answer. Either you spend far too much time on a card or the card gives you too much information so you don't really test the knowledge.

I also tried it for computer shortcuts - it seems to me that they are really useful only when part of the muscle memory - so practicing them works better then memorization.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#40

Post by SamPatt »

entropie wrote: post #2

Pretty OT: A few month ago I tried to marry my simple note system with anki. My goal was to be able to send simple front/backside cards to an api and it would get integrated and I can use it immediately. Ofc, when I edit cards via my notes-backend, the cards in anki should update too. Long story short: not possible with anki. It took like an entire day for me to realize its just not possible without diving deep into…

If you use Obsidian there's a great plugin which allows me to make flashcards easily within my notes:

https://www.stephenmwangi.com/obsidian-spaced-repetition/

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