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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#81

Post by keiferski »

brightball wrote: post #78
keiferski wrote: post #8

I’ve been using Anki for about a decade now, and as far as I’m concerned, the only real improvements needed are design/UI based. It is functionally irrelevant if the algorithm is optimized or not when the actual user interface seems boring to potential users. While I do like that Anki has power user options, it’s also very unintuitive to the average person just looking into it. Which is really a shame, as the spacing…

I’ve been reading about spaced repetition and Anki for years. Never got around to actually trying it on anything. I wonder if there are any good recommendations for something to try it on?

Language learning is the classic use case, but I also use it from everything from historical facts to encyclopedia entries on a subject I’m trying to master.

Probably the simplest use case to get started is improving your English vocabulary. (Assuming English is your first language.) I try to add a card for any word I come across that I don’t know the meaning of, and it works very well.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#82

Post by david_allison »

entropie wrote: post #25
johanyc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every anki card is just a webview. Its very possible to call an api

Then you should be able to link me to some docs.

> In Anki, templates are written in HTML, which is the language that web pages are written in. The styling section is CSS, which is the language used for styling web pages.

https://docs.ankiweb.net/templates/intro.html

----

But you'd want AnkiConnect, or a Python-based addon for your workflow

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#83

Post by Pooge »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #51
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'…

Not buying at all that you learned 18000 words and 5000 kanji in ten minutes per day. Thats 60 hours a year for say five year, or 300 hours. Thats leaves you with about 70 words and/or kanji per hour or less than a minute per word/kanji. A rate which far surpasses native speakers. Anki works, it doesnt need these unrealistic takes.

Whoops, sorry if that was confusing.

Actually, it took me 20 minutes of time per day to do my reviews + new words. I had, on average, 200 cards to go through daily (180 review + 20 new cards).[1] Going through 18'000 words took me around 5 years. 5×365×20=36'500

> A rate which far surpasses native speakers.

Are you comparing me to babies? It took me 2 weekends to learn all kana, but it takes years for a toddler to learn just hiragana. It's not a fair comparison.

> Anki works, it doesnt need these unrealistic takes.

I wonder why you think it's unrealistic. It's not like I'm a genius or anything.[2]

[1] Two cards is one word; one for English -> Japanese, one for Japanese -> English.

[2] Some teachers definitely thought I was a genius because of my memory, but it was all thanks to Anki. And proof is that I was absolutely bad at text comprehension. Anki doesn't make you practice that.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#84

Post by raincole »

SirHumphrey wrote: post #39

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…

> it works really well for some well-known things like vocabulary

And mathematics and physics, which are (at undergraduate level) even more well-understood than vocabulary.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#85

Post by amluto »

My personal peeve about Anki: I don’t like its data model. It seems to me that there ought to be collections of notes (which might be things one would download or generate with an LLM or make yourself or share with friends or students). On top of one or more collections of notes are the sets of cards to want to learn, and they can derive from the notes. This includes, roughly, templates plus some concept of which cards are enabled. On top of that is the spaced repetition history and model. There also ought to be a way to constrain what cards should be studied in a given session. (For example, if learning Chinese or Japanese, one might want to have a pencil and paper when practicing writing but not reading. When practicing without paper, one might want to skip the writing cards.)

Anki doesn’t seem to separate these layers at all. Everything is a monolithic database. Import is unpleasant. Export is unpleasant. Sharing is unpleasant. Doing anything other than practicing and editing in the UI is unpleasant. And, every time I try Anki, I get stuck when I can’t manipulate my own data outside Anki.

Is there any system out there that doesn’t have this issue?

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#86

Post by hshshshshsh »

mark38848 wrote: post #22

Why does everybody want to learn Japanese? What makes Japanese so enticing? Why not Mandarin or at lead Spanish?

Ego.

Chinese evil. Communist. Bad. Bad Chinese. Bad bad. Cheap products.

Japanese. exotic. mystical. Samurai. Ninja. Anime. Good. Sony. Good. Good cars. Zen. Good.

Me good. Me learn Japanese. Me exotic and mystical. Super power. Me good. Me smart. Me learned Japanse. Me great.

Me me me. Me me me. Me me me.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#87

Post by johnsea »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #52
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'…

I made a tool based on this principle! We spend hours a day browsing the web, so I made a browser extension[0] that translates sentences at your knowledge level into the language you're learning, so that you're always learning a little through immersion. I also used the same "10 minutes a day on Anki" strategy with my A levels, and it made the revision process so so much nicer because stuff I'd learnt two years ago w…

Looks not bad but a) billing/prices should imho be prominent and not hidden behind trial or get started. And b) not sure if 5/12/20 per month is not too much? The About section is nice. (I use two other paid language services, thus no need/interest in another)

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#89

Post by scalingpilled »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #74
iandanforth wrote: post #63

I wrote "Why Anki Doesn't Work for Me" ( https://medium.com/@iandanforth/why-anki-doesnt-work-for-me-... ) six years ago, which means it was before the new algorithm was implemented. While Anki likely still suffers from all the other issues I mentioned, this directly addresses my point (3). I'm going to have to give it another try and see if the other points are still too much friction, or if the frustration caused b…

I switched to FSRS via the extension partway through my A levels. I also used the little google collab notebook to custom fit it to my learning patterns - I'm not sure if that's in the version that was merged into the main version. It about halved the amount of reviews I needed to do, and they didn't come up in bursts, so they were a lot more pleasant. I didn't quite believe it at first, and worried that it would be…

I’m doing my A-levels at the moment with economics and geography still to go, do you have any tips or advice for leveraging FSRS / tailoring it to my learning style that is more specific to A-levels, based on your experience?

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#90

Post by jwrallie »

I wonder how it compares with the current SuperMemo.

I experimented with SuperMemo around 18 months ago, and it made me fall in love with SRS again. The main reason being the algorithm is less punishing when I skip a day. Maybe it has better defaults?

I once skipped a whole week and could get back on track in the next week, in Anki that feels unbearable.

Another thing I really liked about it is that you can edit a card as you are studying without having to open a separate window, helps me stay in the flow when studying.

But… With a better algorithm I might give it a try in the future… Being FOSS is the real advantage here.

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