221–230 of 538 posts
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…
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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...
Am I reading this right, did users go through >10k repetitions on average?
I wasn't involved in the benchmark, and don't know whether `SM16-v-SM17.csv` is a full export. Didn't see any reviews before 2020, and it may only be an export of a subset of reviews.
https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/srs-benchmark/#dat...
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I have been trying to use Anki for years. Every time it is the same story: I keep it up for a few months until I miss a couple days, then due cards accumulate far beyond what can be reasonably managed, and I end up spending more time trying to fix the app than actually learning anything.
This is an area where I feel like there's scope for improvement in the SRS space. All the SRS systems I've seen essentially assume the user is a perfect robot who will do their reviews every day without fail. But most people will have off days or go on holiday for a week and not look at the app, or whatever -- and as you note, the user experience in that case is awful: you come back to a huge number of reviews which…
A human who had a lot of time to learn during January, because his job workload was easy is not failing anything if his job related workload becomes high in March and April. But, all that January effort will be punished by super high workloads in March and April in Anki.
Pro Tip , if you're using LLMs to learn, create an MCP tool for them to insert Anki cards on topics you're discussing in a csv on google drive, then sync that with you anki decks on your phone. This was a game changer for me and working with LLMS, while I still think they make you dumb, and we essentially use them to offload critical thinking (almost only find myself using them when tired lazy, and just cant), if you…
I did this because I realized I was hitting an issue where I theoretically "knew" a word (would get it always correct on the card), but wouldn't always recognize it in a novel context.
I'm hoping that having the context be variable when I'm learning it will help fix this issue.
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…
One thing that bothers me about SRS is that it doesn't get enough attention from people who understand the difference between memorization and language acquisition. It gets a ton of attention from people who are doing test prep or who get intrinsic reward from their memorization accomplishments.
Memorization is not my goal — I want to get better at reading Spanish and French — but I find that drilling on vocabulary and example sentences helps a lot. I compare it to using scaffolding in construction. Scaffolding is not a building. Scaffolding doesn't serve any of the purposes a building does. But if you need to build, expand, or refurbish a building, sometimes building scaffolding in and around it can speed things up a hell of a lot.
I wish there were better guidance for using memorization to assist in language learning, but the world seems to be split between people who are satisfied with memorization as their goal (for test prep or intrinsic satisfaction) and people who dismiss memorization entirely because it isn't their goal.
Usually my intuition about how well I know something is not too far off. If you don't specify anything, it doubles the time since the last review.
One direction could be to incorporate semantics, which afair FSRS doesn't do at all yet. A good flashcard deck will have a lot of semantic overlap, e.g., a card for the vocab word itself, that word in a sentence, etc. Struggling with one component is a strong signal you'll struggle with another.
The same thing could be done for just better spacing, so you don't "cheat" by having too closely-related cards next to eachother in a review (the review signal will be less noisy).
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…
You'd probably say silver bullets aren't a silver bullet because you still have to load the gun and shoot it.
Pro Tip , if you're using LLMs to learn, create an MCP tool for them to insert Anki cards on topics you're discussing in a csv on google drive, then sync that with you anki decks on your phone. This was a game changer for me and working with LLMS, while I still think they make you dumb, and we essentially use them to offload critical thinking (almost only find myself using them when tired lazy, and just cant), if you…
I created a python script that checks my anki deck for the cards that I'm scheduled to review the next day and asks an LLM to generate new sentences for the cards, so that every time I see them, I see them in a new context. I did this because I realized I was hitting an issue where I theoretically "knew" a word (would get it always correct on the card), but wouldn't always recognize it in a novel context. I'm hoping…
Some of the problem is due to the specificity of the training effect. I.e., if you mostly practice something through flash cards then you’re going to be training your ability to work with that on flash cards.
With language, there’s an additional challenge—many if not most words have different meanings in different contexts.
Anki is a good piece of software. But I couldn't come up with a worse scheduling algorithm if I tried (old and new one). It's like "here's the thing you just added one second ago. Here it's again immediately after. Ok you got it, you'll see it once again in a month or so lol". It makes it unusable and every time I tried I went back to my own self written program that just lets me set/adjust the intervals myself.
When was the last time you tried? Anki used a static algorithm (SuperMemo 2) before the new FSRS - which is dramatically different. In the short term (first day), I think it's still better to set your own intervals (typicall 1 minute, then 5, then 10). But after that, the algorithm optimizes for reminding you just before forgetting. Highly recommend giving it a try.