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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#241

Post by MostlyStable »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #229
MostlyStable wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ”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.” 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 chal…

Yeah, I'm trying to spend a lot more of my language learning time just reading/listening to content in my target language, but it's actually pretty difficult to find enough content that is in the right difficulty band where it has some words/grammar etc. that I am still learning but not so much that I just can't understand it at all.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#242

Post by qrobit »

ouija wrote: post #226

Interesting. I was never really happy with any spaced repetition algorithm, so I recently implemented my own dumb system which simply asks you for the number of days after which the card shall be shown again: https://github.com/kldtz/vmn 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.

I had a similar problem where I can't remember the answer to the card, but after revealing it, it seemed too easy to make it due in a few days, so I would lie to the program and press Hard/Good. Later I removed scheduling times on top of buttons and decided to trust the algorithm. I believe it helped me to stop caring about schedule times and loosing progress on a certain card. After all, these algorithms were made for ordinary people with ordinary memory behavior.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#243

Post by allenu »

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…

You're right about the data model. I built my own flashcard app [1], so I've had to understand the database schema that Anki uses and a lot of it seems very inelegant, but on the other hand, I can see how it was purpose-built and probably grew over time and things were tacked on. (For instance, there's one table that has a single row, where several fields are simply JSON dictionaries.)

On the other hand, how templates work and how cloze deletions work are really nice. With the flashcard app I built, I didn't have templates, but did have a very basic cloze deletion system where you could mark text to be "hidden" on the front. It was very limited in that you'd only ever get one front/back combination. You could hide multiple bits of text, but they'd all be hidden at the same time. With Anki, you can create multiple groups of hidden text, so that you end up with multiple flashcards from the same note (i.e. you hid three separate groups of text, so you now have three different cards to test with).

I've been working on an update to my app to incorporate templates and cloze deletions like how Anki does it, so now I appreciate that aspect to it.

For my own database, at least in the new version I'm working on, I've ended up creating a schema where the individual attributes for each card are thrown into their own tables, but this is mostly because I needed to support updating individual attributes separately since I use a very simple journaling system to sync across devices. With Anki's schema, I can see why sync was complicated (at least in earlier versions) since it wasn't really built for it.

[1] https://www.freshcardsapp.com/

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#244

Post by pastage »

amluto wrote: post #181
TheDong wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Is that not what anki does? You have a collection of cards, each card can be in one or more decks derived from the cards. > There also ought to be a way to constrain what cards s…

> Is that not what anki does? You have a collection of cards, each card can be in one or more decks derived from the cards. Kind of? As far as I can tell (and I haven't spent enormous amounts of time digging in), there are decks, and a deck contains the notes, the templates (and the cards, which may or may not have any sort of independent existence outside the notes and templates that generate them?), and a deck also…

It is a hard problem with too many solutions. Excel most certainly is limiting since it is a scary format for sharing data. Sharing highly structured info is a hard problem, sharing collections of the same is even harder.

Programming has a similar issue code, docs, resources, discussions and issue tracking are not handled easily.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#245

Post by Alex-Programs »

runarberg wrote: post #184
Alex-Programs wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending half an hour mind-numbingly learning words through flashcards will teach you about as much vocabulary as an hour watching educational videos, but it'll be far less fun and you'll feel like it actually took two hours. Keep that up every day and you'll burn out much faster with option 1 than option 2. Now, maybe you have enough motivation for that not to matter, or the self-discipline to keep going - as I did…

I‘m not super well versed in the literature but I know this has been researched, and—unless you are being hyperbolic—it completely fails the sniff test. As OP points out, SRS is optimized for memory retention. You will almost certainly encounter many more words watching a two hour long video, but you certainly won‘t retain nearly as many words as half an hour of SRS. Actually you can combine the two. Use the two hour…

Yeah, and flashcards generally work better when you're reinforcing existing learning. Learning by flashcards is hellish for me.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#246

Post by chongli »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #195
chongli wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning a language as a hobby is tough. If you don't need the language to communicate and survive in your environment then you have essentially zero real motivation to learn it. The problem with spaced repetition systems is that it doesn't supply that extra motivation. You're still just memorizing things in a vacuum. If you truly want to learn a language you need to use it to communicate. That means making friends,…

You can also be motivated because you like to consume media in the language (relevant for English and Japanese), because you think it will be useful for a job (English) or for travel (French, Spanish, etc.), or simply because you like the language. If you don’t have any of these reasons to motivate you, the question arises of why you’re bothering in the first place.

I started learning Mandarin on Duolingo while dating a Chinese woman. After we broke up I continued with it just because I found it fun.

Now I have several Chinese friends and I'm learning Chinese cooking. I'm motivated to continue learning about Chinese food and Chinese culture, and the important role food plays within it.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#247

Post by djeastm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #122
wccrawford wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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

This resonated with me. I think the decline in excitement towards learning, that we used to do without thinking about it, happens naturally with aging.

Evolution doesn't reward older humans that much for learning so most of us don't feel that same excitement. Compare this to when we're young and need to learn fast, so the dopamine rewards are off the charts.

Consider all of the retirees who spend hours at slot machines (or virtual ones like Candy Crush) to get that dopamine fix as easily as possible.

Maybe a more tasteful gamification balance can be found.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#248

Post by ouija »

qrobit wrote: post #242
ouija wrote: post #226

Interesting. I was never really happy with any spaced repetition algorithm, so I recently implemented my own dumb system which simply asks you for the number of days after which the card shall be shown again: https://github.com/kldtz/vmn 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.

I had a similar problem where I can't remember the answer to the card, but after revealing it, it seemed too easy to make it due in a few days, so I would lie to the program and press Hard/Good. Later I removed scheduling times on top of buttons and decided to trust the algorithm. I believe it helped me to stop caring about schedule times and loosing progress on a certain card. After all, these algorithms were made f…

I think my problem is that I'm not using the system as intended. I learn new vocabulary mainly by reading texts or watching videos in the target language and use spaced repetition to keep track of my progress. If I can't remember a word (as indicated by SR), I'll reread the text/rewatch the video where I've first encountered it. I don't want to keep reviewing the same word in my spaced repetition program, especially not in the same session.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#249

Post by Gys »

I found it a little annoying that SRS is immediately explained to mean Spaced Repetition System, but then the F is added without explaining what it stands for. Most references of the article do neither. Except https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The... which says the F means Free. Seems a little too easy? I found nothing else. Chatgpt says it means Flexible, which actually makes more sense? Anybody else can chip in?

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#250

Post by grep_name »

david_allison wrote: post #237
grep_name wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to get into anki a bunch of times but never stick with it. It's an on-and-off thing for me that I end up looking into again every few years, which I've gone through about 5 times now. Here's how it usually goes: * Get interested in memorizing something / multiple things * Find that the decks available to me are actually not so great * Get reading online, people say that the real way to benefit from it is t…

Given what you've said: * Make your own cards (unless there's an automated workflow [Japanese, sentence mining], really good shared decks, or you're studying for a standardized exam [USMLE]) * Deck Settings (scheduling): Enable FSRS. Press 'Optimize', then press optimize once per month. * Deck Settings (workload): Wait 2 weeks before gradually increasing new cards per day (if you want to study for longer). Decrease i…

Thank you, the pass / fail addon will help a lot I think, in addition to the FSRS features included in the article. I'll come back to this comment for setting up my settings before starting up again with Anki.

If I'm planning to learn several topics at once (I'm never preparing for anything I will be tested on or hit a deadline for, this is not for a school, work, or travel program), is it better to treat the decks as one big combined review do you think?

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