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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#121

Post by bowsamic »

mark38848 wrote: post #22

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

1. Generally people using such systems to learn language only need to do so if they aren't immersed in the country where it is being spoken. I stopped using Anki for German after a while of living here, even though I'm still learning. Therefore, most language learners are doing so not because they want to live in the country but because they want to consume media written in that language

2. Japanese is becoming one of the most popular languages for foreign media, probably even surpassing English at this point. Anime is really huge now, particularly in the US. It has shifted from being a nerd thing to being of interest for the "cool kids" (if there is even such a thing now). Japan also had a huge and very interesting media industry in the 80s and 90s including some very novel video game concepts, most of which has not been translated

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#122

Post by TeMPOraL »

wccrawford wrote: post #43
yellow_lead wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to i.e Duolingo, the app is quite boring. I still have been using it for years. But I sometimes wonder if adding a bit of gamification may help. For instance, streaks, sound effects, etc. Obviously, those should be optional

I've quit Duolingo because of the gamification. It's far, far too much, and it puts me in the wrong mindset for learning. Instead of concentrating on the knowledge, I'm gaming the system to improve my score the most. There were times I would stop learning because I knew if I saved it for later, I could use a multiplier for a higher score. And the daily emotion-tugging streak reminders started to actually piss me off.…

I'm of two minds about it. Duolingo is off-putting for me, not because of gamification as a concept, but rather because of their particular implementation - with tons of clearly user-abusive bullshit with gems and chests and watching ads and shit.

I used to not care for gamification because I knew that my brain is resistant to it in activities that aren't otherwise rewarding on their own. Like, I quickly realize I'm just tricking myself, and then it stops working. But somewhere over the years, I must have burned out of my dopamine reserves or something, because apps like Anki feel now actively off-putting, in the sense that I lose all energy just looking at them. Memorizing cards gets tricky when your eyes just glaze over them and nothing is loaded even to short-term memory, much less long-term. So at this point I'd appreciate even a little bit of immediate feedback and some progress tracker that evokes ever so slightly positive feelings.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#123

Post by david_allison »

jwrallie wrote: post #90

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 ca…

Currently under debate. FSRS is likely better than SM-17. No data on SM-18

Q&A/discussion: https://supermemopedia.com/wiki/SuperMemo_dethroned_by_FSRS

Repo: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs-vs-sm17

Discussion: https://discord.gg/qjzcRTx => https://discord.com/channels/368267295601983490/136895216717...

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#124

Post by TheDong »

JackDanMeier wrote: post #108

I was working on a product which has FSRS implemented, and is heavily inspired by anki. The change we made was that rather than rate yourself, you have to type your answer and its graded by an LLM. It also has a button to explain the concept to you as if you are 5 (eli5) and you get feedback on your answer. You can also create the flashcards by uploading a pdf and then generate them from it. I've stopped working on i…

> graded by an LLM

This seems impossible to me. In anki, there's "hard", "good", and "easy" which are all for "I got this right".

For my usage, "hard" is "I got it right, but I was only like 60% sure", "good" is "I had to actively think", and "easy" is "effortlessly correct, no real thought required".

There's no way for an AI to tell if my identical input is the result of a 50/50 guess, or a little thought, or effortless recall. "delay to answer" also isn't a good approximation, I have a habit of alt-tabbing and chatting with a friend on random cards of any difficulty.

I find distinguishing those levels of easy for totally identical answers ends up making SRS more effective, and AI just can't know my inner thoughts. Maybe once we have brain implants.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#125

Post by wongarsu »

mark38848 wrote: post #22

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

You learn Japanese for the media and culture; Mandarin for the financial opportunities; Russian for the reverse-engineering community; Spanish, French or Arabic to be able to speak with large diverse groups of people, typically for travel; Klingon, Na'vi, Esperanto or Elvish to fit in certain communities

Accordingly, the stereotypical CS major is attracted to Japanese and Klingon, the stereotypical Business major to Chinese. Even though few follow through because of the amount of work and perseverance required

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#126

Post by covertcorvid »

RemNote (https://www.remnote.com/) solves the problems people are mentioning about

1) The time it takes to make cards. RemNote allows you to take Notion-style block notes and quickly turn bullet points into flashcards using symbols. For example, you might be in class and make a bullet point in the format

- The quick brown fox jumps over >> the lazy dog

which you can later review as a flashcard that is automatically separated front/back by the >>.

2) The old and unintuitive UI - again, basically just Notion with flashcards. You can easily view all your notes in a bullet hierarchy and then switch over to SR flashcard practice. Even has rich code blocks, image occlusion, tables etc. A much better implementation of Anki's notes/cards metaphor in my opinion.

I am not sponsored by RemNote, just a university student who has bounced off Anki and really likes the app.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#127

Post by avemuri »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #111
Alex-Programs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaced repetition is time-optimised , but it isn't self-discipline optimised, nor motivation-optimised. If you're limited by time, it's very efficient, but it drains motivation. If you're anywhere close to being limited by motivation (or, failing that, self-discipline), it just causes burnout and failure. I credit Anki to my success at GCSEs and A Levels despite having a head injury, and I also credit it to me burnin…

I don't understand, wouldn't it be worse for motivation to take longer to achieve the same results?

Motivation is some combination of real and perceived effort Vs expected reward. Shorter isn't always better. For eg. Counting every single calorie is the shorter way to lose weight, but for most people, eating approximately healthy is more optimal from an effort /motivation poi t of view.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#128

Post by runarberg »

ape4 wrote: post #97
amluto wrote: post #85

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 car…

Yeah, if you're learning a language, have a group of restaurant words and another group about air travel, etc. Then then user will associate them.

For that I buy a vocabulary book, or a phrase book. As I read through it, and if I don‘t know a word or understand a sentence, I try to learn it using various methods, and create an Anki card to keep it in memory. Anki is just to retain the word.

On a plus side, you can buy specialized vocab/phrase books, I have one just for onomonopias. Also my beginner vocab books come with recordings from actual native speaker voice actors, which I add to the deck. Much better quality than anything an LLM or speech synthesizers can give you.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#129

Post by JackDanMeier »

TheDong wrote: post #124
JackDanMeier wrote: post #108

I was working on a product which has FSRS implemented, and is heavily inspired by anki. The change we made was that rather than rate yourself, you have to type your answer and its graded by an LLM. It also has a button to explain the concept to you as if you are 5 (eli5) and you get feedback on your answer. You can also create the flashcards by uploading a pdf and then generate them from it. I've stopped working on i…

> graded by an LLM This seems impossible to me. In anki, there's "hard", "good", and "easy" which are all for "I got this right". For my usage, "hard" is "I got it right, but I was only like 60% sure", "good" is "I had to actively think", and "easy" is "effortlessly correct, no real thought required". There's no way for an AI to tell if my identical input is the result of a 50/50 guess, or a little thought, or effort…

Yes, this is also something I have been thinking about, can an LLM really know how well I know something. There is the issue with the grading with again, hard, good and easy that I can cut myself some slack and say "I knew that" even when I didn't(and I have a strong memory of having done this myself). And there is the possibility of bullshitting the LLM and just all you know about the subject rather than the exact definition of the flashcard. I'm leaning towards any knowledge rather than specifying that the exact answer should be graded. Whats your take?

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#130

Post by uselesswords »

amluto wrote: post #85

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 car…

It’s amazing how every single point you’ve made here is wrong as the other commenter already dove into. On top of that Anki is one of the best documented pieces of open-source software I’ve messed with. If you’re able to program, ChatGPT can basically handle any task you want it too, I data mine the sqllite database regularly for my own insights.
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