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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#431

Post by socalgal2 »

I probably need to go read the studies but of SRS is so great, why aren't all schools just SRS farms (or are they?)

Especially for language study, as a friend put it, speaking a language is like learning a musical instrument, no amount of book studying will teach you how to play the instrument. The way you learn to play is to play. And similarly, the way you learn to speak is to speak. Sure, you can fill your vocabulary, but I question a little how much it helps in context. Obviously it's not zero. I'm sure curious, if there are better methods than SRS for language learning given that hearing, creating, understanding, and speaking whole sentences is the goal, not individual words. I can generally learn a new word in my native language with one exposure, no SRS needed.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#432

Post by melagonster »

socalgal2 wrote: post #431

I probably need to go read the studies but of SRS is so great, why aren't all schools just SRS farms (or are they?) Especially for language study, as a friend put it, speaking a language is like learning a musical instrument, no amount of book studying will teach you how to play the instrument. The way you learn to play is to play. And similarly, the way you learn to speak is to speak. Sure, you can fill your vocabul…

This is why they added more and more exams into class. Basically, a test for content from the last class is a type of SRS.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#434

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#435

Post by domenicd »

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 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 was! There's a little "Optimize" button in the deck settings that you're supposed to click once a month or so, which does what the old colab would do for you.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#436

Post by domenicd »

LVB wrote: post #202

> Thankfully, the leading spaced repetition software, Anki, has incorporated FSRS as its default scheduling algorithm since version 23.10, released in 2023-11 I've used Anki for a long time and apply updates, but I don't closely track changes. Based on the above, I figured I'd be using FSRS, but I'm not. All of my decks have that setting turned off. Fair enough (no silent updates to existing data), but even when I cr…

This was a mistake in the article. Sorry about that, and I've fixed it now!

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#437

Post by domenicd »

covertcorvid wrote: post #126

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…

What spacing algorithm does RemNote use?

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#438

Post by mlyle »

kqr wrote: post #318
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…

> There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs I think this is a common misunderstanding. Half the benefit of SRS comes from working out what the flashcards are. You have to circle around a concept, look for similarities, differences, examples, generalisations, properties, etc. Is it hard work? Yes. Does it help understanding? Massively. This is also a very diffi…

Creating your own flashcards and choosing what to curate is a helpful part of the process. This doesn't mean that being able to snip something nicely into a flashcard is not beneficial.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#440

Post by domenicd »

bpev wrote: post #183
Macha wrote: post #3

I do think that Wanikani and Bunpro are kind of in a catch-22 on this compared to Anki. They've built their gamification features and UI on the idea that cards have specific buckets that they're in and something like FSRS is a lot more varied than that. Especially Wanikani, which has a system of unlocking more items based on your current items reaching a specific stage.

So I haven't integrated FSRS, and of these two, I've only used Wanikani, and have been playing with a reimplemention for Chinese hanzi: https://hanzi.bpev.me But seeing how it's implemented, I think they could totally integrate something like FSRS to at least just replace their scheduling (how long until an item is next shown). The unlocking system can be implemented as a separate gatekeeping mechanism, and the bucke…

I dream of building a WaniKani competitor that uses FSRS. Unfortunately it's one of those projects where 10% of the work is building, and 90% of the work is marketing/community building/evangelism. (And the 10% is not trivial work either!)
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