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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#281

Post by aaldrick »

_1tem wrote: post #234
aaldrick wrote: post #232

I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved. What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important: It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should wo…

Just tried RemNote with their AI-generated cards features and so far looks amazing. They can generate cards from PDFs, webpages and notes.

Thank you - I'll give it a try!

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#282

Post by Expertium »

Muromec wrote: post #146
ix101 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way it could grade you automatically is by the speed of flipping the card (or entering the correct answer). If it took less than a second to confirm then evidently it was easy.

Whenever I try to use anki I can't figure what those four buttons actually mean, so I end up with 40 cards that I still can't recall and then the thing happily drops another 10 on top and I just delete the deck or the app. Haven't learned the thing I was trying to learn with it ever. Either I don't understand the algorithm or it doesn't understand me.

Maybe the manual will help you: https://docs.ankiweb.net/studying.html#answer-buttons

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#283

Post by [deleted] »

Knork-and-Fife wrote: post #162

I used basically this algorithm in college with the following setup: Make a word document that lists all the keys to memorize vertically. Save as PDF Open the PDF in a viewer with annotation tools. Make a clickable note in the margin just next to each key. Write out the value to memorize in the note field. Cycle through the clickable notes. When you get one right easily, drag the note more to the left in the margin.…

[deleted]

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#284

Post by Pooge »

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…

> Use Anki every day

I think this is great advice. I have some friends that used Anki that told me "oh yeah I just study once per week" and I just had PTSD of when I forgot to do one day. Sometimes I would miss a day due to traveling and timezone difference and I would instantly panic when I would see 400+ cards to review.

If you don't do it daily, Anki doesn't make any sense to me. My recommendation—to that friend and everyone else—is to study a little bit every day. It's much better for building a strong foundation, especially for languages.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#286

Post by allenu »

aaldrick wrote: post #279
allenu wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've written my own flashcards app (Fresh Cards) and once in a while, users ask if there's a way to import flashcards from things like web pages and PDF files, but to be honest, I still don't know how it would work, so maybe you can help me. From a user standpoint, would it be an interactive process where you highlight things and then click a button to say "turn this into a flashcard", or would it be an automated too…

I've tried Fresh Cards so thank you for developing that app, and trying to add cool new software into the space. Great question. Here's one way to do it: The first is how clunky the process of going from X to flashcard feels to the end user. One way to deal with the fact that we are crossing software border is to add an extra step where highlighting something allows you to go into an "inbox" before any cards are made…

I appreciate the detailed answer. That's a really good point about the software boundary and how that adds friction to just creating cards in the first place.

I like the idea of an inbox where you just toss things you think are worth remembering and maybe having a browser plugin or OS shortcut to save highlighted bits of info, but not necessarily creating a flashcard immediately from it. There's definitely some concrete things I can prototype here to try to make that workflow easier. And I can see how taking those tidbits of info and passing them to AI to create flashcards is doable too.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#287

Post by sn9 »

cpburns2009 wrote: post #276
sn9 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that but it's completely revolutionized the way medical students study. IIRC the effect was so profound they had to modify the structure of some tests or something to that effect. And polyglots have been using SRS for years. As always, the real problem when people fail to do something that works is psychological, not technical. I'd say anyone who made an Ozempic for motivation would make a killing, but I beli…

I'm not so sure. My brother's medical school had to tell students they had to study the actual material rather than Anki decks because so many students were failing tests.

That seems highly atypical.

Perhaps they were relying on LLMs to generate decks?

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#288

Post by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe »

candrewlee wrote: post #256

Do any of these algorithms use vector embeddings to determine the semantic similarity between cards? Seems like that might be a useful parameter for tuning the algorithm, since you’re likely to forget something similar on a topic you’ve forgotten things about.

That was actually my very first python project, I made this to go through medical school: https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/AnnA_Anki_neuronal_A...

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#289

Post by fplonka »

aaldrick wrote: post #232

I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved. What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important: It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should wo…

This mostly works with Mochi - you can paste PDFs etc into ChatGPT and the Mochi markdown format is simple, so it can generate flashcards for you (I have the format explained in my system prompt so I don't have to re-explain it every time). This synergizes nicely with the fact that you really want to understand something before you make flashcards from it.

If you pay for Mochi you also get API access, so one could make a ChatGPT wrapper which adds the cards for you. But since I like to review the cards manually before adding I don't mind the copy paste step.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#290

Post by fluidcruft »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #160
maximus-decimus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

It's very likely that you're using Anki in situations that will burn you out and drain your motivation anyway.
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