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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#461

Post by j1elo »

andy12_ wrote: post #397
j1elo wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any prompt tips you have learned on that path, that you could share? or the obvious request has been useful already without too much fiddling? I was thinking to use some study material to test drive Google NotebookLM for this use case.

I haven't tried many variations yet because a basic prompt seems to work well, thought it is important to remind Gemini of not using ";" inside the text of the cards if you use it as a separator. I imagine that with better prompts you could get it to generate very nice flash cards, but I'm in a little tight schedule, so I can't play around it for too long. Another nicer option I think would be using the structured ou…

That's already very useful! thank you.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#462

Post by _1tem »

mfranzs wrote: post #379
_1tem wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a longtime Anki user I just want to say THANK YOU! Just downloaded RemNote for the first time and gave it a spin. I’ve been using Anki for years for language learning (Ukrainian and Russian and Arabic), but also for poetry memorization. Weird coincidence: a few days ago I was looking for an AI-powered flashcard creator: I get regular emails from curated sources that have lots of useful information, but I am too la…

RemNote founder here - been building RemNote for the past 8 years (4 in private for myself, 4 in public), and we're not going anywhere! SRS is the future.

While I have you, I wanted to share with you an idea that I've had for years to improve SRS systems, that is SRS -> Email Inbox Zero as a brain hack. I tried to build a plugin for Anki but could not make it work. Not sure if it can be done with RemNote or I can build a plugin to do this.

The basic idea: SRS is great, but it can be hard to get motivated to start studying your cards every day. On the other hand, most people have a habit/addiction to check their email or social media multiple times a day. The idea is to intersperse random card studying into my email or Telegram inbox, reducing the time to study a single card to a few seconds interspersed across a busy day. So I want to get a few random emails (or texts) with a due flashcard question, and have the ability to answer the flashcard directly in one click from the message. The hard part is that last part: getting the software to work so that I can answer the flashcard in a single click from the email, so that I don't need to open the whole app just to start studying.

Would really help to keep up with my studying even on busy days and hack the brain's addiction to email/social media to do something useful.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#463

Post by LittleFishyChan »

edanm wrote: post #328
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…

I've never used it, but my understanding is that something that does this is considered a "killer feature" of Supermemo. It has a mode that lets you read text (via a PDF viewer) and lets you create flashcards as you read in some kind of semi-automated way. Or something like that. Like I said, I never used it.

You’re referring to incremental reading, which yes is indeed one of the killer features of SuperMemo. You're basically just reading, but you have at the core of it an SRS (SuperMemo) to store cool ideas in flashcard form and every article (“Topics” is how they are referred to in SuperMemo) will be shown to you at a later date. I like to think of them all on a “conveyor belt” that means everything you put into it will eventually find its way back to you. I love incremental reading but for many years I have struggled to find a way to mimic this OUTSIDE of SuperMemo. The overall peace of mind and level of control I have over the learning process is quite remarkable, and incremental reading is more than just the sum of its parts. I wish there were a standalone app for your phone or iPad for incremental reading, as I would love to use my iPad to do what I do when reading in SuperMemo on my windows laptop.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#464

Post by _1tem »

aaldrick wrote: post #358
aaldrick wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you - I'll give it a try!

Okay on first try, this seems promising, I'll try the pro sub tomorrow properly and take it for a proper spin, but: - I read a lot of PDFs. I can click a sentence and have it suggest cards, or fill my own. That's already a great start on the "space in between".

With the pro subscription I was able to prompt Claude 3.5 to instruct it to create the flashcards with specific question types that I wanted. Worked much better than the standard free auto-flashcard creation.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#465

Post by collyw »

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…

I grabbed a set of flashcard for Spanish verb conjugations. The guy had put in a lot of work to get them in the most frequent order, over 3000 lines of python. It been a massive help to me and I am not sure that writing the code to generate the list would really have helped my Spanish too much.

https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjuga...

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#466

Post by barrell »

nomadpenguin wrote: post #356
barrell wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I implemented free recall into FSRS pretty easily. Granted, it’s only for language learning, and I have it set up to work in a free recall friendly way (you don’t learn cards, you learn actual words and morphemes) but it’s been working for a few weeks now. I’m working on a product video atm, but once that’s done my next task (sometime this week) is to clean up the UI and merge it to master. I almost never see someone…

How are you handling scheduling with FSRS? The challenge that I quickly saw was that it was difficult to figure out when you should advance a segment of information. If you get 80% of the info right, should it be advanced? What happens to the 20% you missed? How do you prevent yourself from missing the same 20% every time it comes around?

If you don’t mention an item, it is skipped (no grade). If you can’t remember an item, but you recall learning it, you describe it and it will be marked as fail. At the end there is a screen with all the words and you can change any from skip to fail if you truly forgot it.

Any skipped items are then prioritized in the flashcards/cloze completion/shadowing modalities.

AFAIK free recall is not very high signal as to which words you know and which ones you don’t. Skipped words I just as often forget about cards because they’re so easy as I do because they’re so hard. It is however an incredibly effective exercise to cement your recall (and in my apps case, a good way to skip a good portion of your reviews in a day)

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#467

Post by collyw »

udit99 wrote: post #316
TechDebtDevin wrote: post #204

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…

> f 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. Speaking for myself, I’d love to see a blogpost detailing how this is done. At the very least, I’d love to know: How are you syncing csvs to anki cards and how does the MCP interaction look like for an LLMs response to the CSV creation

Ask chatgpt how to do it

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#468

Post by collyw »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #53
bearjaws wrote: post #6

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…

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 have downloaded 3 card decks for learning Spanish.

The main deck I use for verb conjugations expects me to use it for maybe half an hour per day or the list just build up (I have no idea if this is standard behaviour, but I don't seem to get the same build up on the other decks that I use less frequently).

While it end up being a bit of a chore some days, I appreciate that it does force me to use it every day, which is good for my discipline.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#469

Post by fivestones »

NiloCK wrote: post #421
kqr wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. This is at least half true, but among SRS folks it's overstated. The same argument stands for any creative endeavor. Debussy had a greater experience than I did with Claire de Lune, because he composed it. In turn, my experience…

This looks amazing. I love your description

> …the FOSS lovechild of anki, duolingo, wikipedia, and MathAcadamy, with a more generalized surface area…

I haven’t read much in your blog and the answers are probably there, but what’s the current state? It looks like you’ve done a lot of work on it. Is it in a usable state at this point?

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#470

Post by kragen »

trane_project wrote: post #441
kragen wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For complicated skills, you need to be a domain expert to really know how to do this. (...) I have used it to teach myself music. It sounds like you must have had some interesting difficulties with that, not having been a domain expert in music. What were they and how did you overcome them?

I have been mostly working on a set of courses based around backing tracks I got from a course called “improvise for real”. So I only had to make the structure of those backing tracks explicit, which only required knowing the circle of fifths.

I see! That's awesome!
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