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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#501

Post by dyeray »

> And the idea that you’ll literally never see a card again after the last interval is terrifying, as it means you’re constantly losing knowledge.

This and other stuff I read on the article makes me thing that this person is maybe over-using the SRS. In my opinion, although OP is clearly way smarter than me, at some point we need to graduate from SRS, read native material, in Wanikani probably at first 100% of time needs to be dedicated to SRS and gradually time on SRS needs to be reduced and increased on reading native material, once on a reading level which is good enough so new vocabulary appears sparsely enough, what is the point on grinding an SRS? Most people don't even reach level 60, I don't see the point on being on lvl60 and still stay there grinding leeches. In the end SRS is not an end, it just gives you a mapping, an automatic translation from A to B without context. It is just a temporary bootstrap so you end up fixing it through real material afterwards. However, I think Wanikani should allow to suspend leeches, for sure.

Regarding Bunpro, I bought it, but I'm more convinced with time that SRSing grammar is probably not the best idea, and I think they could do a lot better if they had better exercises, like "not exactly an SRS", just selecting varied exercises for you every day.

PS: I remember seeing an expert in languages recommending that all cards you add to Anki need to be deleted after 2 months. If you didn't learn it by that time and it is important it will come up again and you will re-add it. Not sure if I agree with this either, but between this, and having a word forever there must be an intermediate point.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#502

Post by david_allison »

leephillips wrote: post #402
xdfgh1112 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how anki already works on Android, using a custom intent.

I have anki on Android and I never see options to use it from another app. Do I need to set something up?

Hi Lee,

We have 4 levels of integration:

* Some apps which integrate with AnkiDroid via our Content Provider based API (see [0]). This integrates with the Android permissions system, but you may also disable all integrations in the AnkiDroid Advanced Settings. AnkiConnect support (REST API) can also be enabled using a third party app.

* System Context Menu (ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT): Selecting text in most apps should provide an 'Anki Card' option in the context menu. This may need to be enabled in AnkiDroid: Settings - General. This may also need to be enabled on your system (system dependent: long press text in an app, expand the context menu to 'more items' and select 'Manage Apps')

* Android Share Menu: Select text and select 'Share', this enables use of our 'Instant Note Editor' for cloze deletions, as well as our standard 'Add Note' screen[1]

* Android Intents (should work with Tasker)[2]

[0] https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Third-Party-A...

[1] https://github.com/criticalAY/GSoC-Report/blob/main/README.m...

[2] https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/AnkiDroid-API...

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#503

Post by iLemming »

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…

> If someone knows of such a tool, I would love to hear about it.

Well, you probably not gonna like this but Emacs with Org-mode is excellent for managing Anki cards. My SR cards are not in some other medium — they are literally my notes. I can edit them freely; I can generate new content easily (e.g., using LLMs); I can turn any thought or a book quote into a card and vice-versa; cards are version controlled; I can embed formulas and code snippets; they are easy to search through; they are platform-independent; they are contextual — my cards are intertwined with additional notes, book annotations, screenshots, video links, etc — they help me study subjects with immersion;

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#504

Post by leephillips »

david_allison wrote: post #502
leephillips wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have anki on Android and I never see options to use it from another app. Do I need to set something up?

Hi Lee, We have 4 levels of integration: * Some apps which integrate with AnkiDroid via our Content Provider based API (see [0]). This integrates with the Android permissions system, but you may also disable all integrations in the AnkiDroid Advanced Settings. AnkiConnect support (REST API) can also be enabled using a third party app. * System Context Menu (ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT): Selecting text in most apps should pro…

Thanks! This is very useful.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#505

Post by mfranzs »

_1tem wrote: post #462
mfranzs wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

I do like this idea of integrating SRS into doom-scrolling streams! I've wanted to prototype something similar, but built completely around your SRS cards.

For email, I think you're right it would need to be frictionless. There are some new email technologies that let you embed dynamic interactions in your email - we might play with that at some point.

So this is probably hard to do as a plugin tbh, but I'd love to explore eventually as a feature.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#506

Post by anotherpaulg »

I wish Anki could dynamically adjust the new cards introduced each day, based on whether you get them right or wrong on first viewing.

Getting 10 new cards that I happen to already know is easy. That's very different than getting 10 new cards that I get wrong, and therefore need to memorize.

I'd love to have 2 settings like:

  - Max number of new card fails, say 4
  - Max number of new cards, say 20
After 4 fails on new cards, Anki would stop showing new cards for the day. But if they're all easy, I might get up to 20 new cards in a day.

Fancier versions could use a decaying average of new card fails from the last few days. Those recently memorized cards are more challenging during review.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#507

Post by BeetleB »

2c2c2c wrote: post #458
BeetleB wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic undergrad statistics. This doesn't make me better at doing statistics, but now I can understand things I read. Whereas prior to SR, I had learned the material three separate times - always forgot because of lack of use. SR made it stick. Algorithms and data structures. Basics of HTML/CSS/JS. I'm not a frontend developer, but this was enough for me to (mostly) understand colleagues' JS code. And often I would in…

> Algorithms and data structures. how do you frame these cards? I've always assumed something like this would be too information dense to be useful

Basic stuff. Dijkstra's algorithm, union find, etc.

I will note that some cards are basic: A simple recall. Other cards ask for me to reproduce the whole algorithm (a violation of SR methodology).

All cards that take a long time to answer are stored in a separate deck, which I go through only when I know I have the time to dedicate.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#508

Post by BeetleB »

sireat wrote: post #454
BeetleB wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic undergrad statistics. This doesn't make me better at doing statistics, but now I can understand things I read. Whereas prior to SR, I had learned the material three separate times - always forgot because of lack of use. SR made it stick. Algorithms and data structures. Basics of HTML/CSS/JS. I'm not a frontend developer, but this was enough for me to (mostly) understand colleagues' JS code. And often I would in…

I can understand using SR for languages or I suppose geography or history trivia. However, how do you use for skills/domains where you have to actively think? Like in your Python example, knowing about os.scandir() would be a tiny bit helpful before Pathlib. Let's say I put pathlib.Path().iterdir() in my Anki card, what would be the point of that for someone who is happily using glob or rglob? What I mean is that for…

As I said, they won't make you better at applying statistics (or programming) - just at recall.

Disciplines like programming, math, and well any technical discipline require both memory and analytical abilities. SR takes care of only the former. The barrier I kept running up against was forgetting definitions and theorems in math - especially if it had been a year or longer since I last used them. This helps mitigate that problem.

> Let's say I put pathlib.Path().iterdir() in my Anki card, what would be the point of that for someone who is happily using glob or rglob?

That's for you to answer - if you prefer doing it with glob/rglob, that's fine. For me, the card was "What is a better way to traverse directories/files than os.walk?".

The next time I reach for os.walk, I'm reminded there is a better way.

OK, let's be real. It doesn't always work. Perhaps only 30% of such cards lead to actual behavior change. In a typical scenario (70% of the time), I'll get the card right, but using os.walk won't trigger the part of my brain that says "Oh, there's a better way". Still, it's a very low price to get that 30%. And the bonus is if I see someone else's code where he uses scandir, I'll immediately know what it is for.

> However knowing why and when recall is important would be crucial instead of knowing bare formula.

Obviously. You'd have to find a way to embed that into a different card.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#509

Post by fivestones »

amluto wrote: post #353
jaredklewis wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I misunderstood something, but I can't find anything in your comments that identifies a flaw with the underlying data model of Anki. It seems your issues are mostly about Anki's data management? So I would strongly suggest your check out anki-connect ( https://git.sr.ht/~foosoft/anki-connect ) which provides a REST API for CRUD operations on Anki notes, cards, decks, and media attachments. Or maybe if you can s…

Maybe "data model" is the wrong term. The last time I tried to use Anki for real, I wanted to set up some Chinese character cards, to be used by 2-3 different people. I found a couple apparently high-quality decks online and downloaded them, and they had lots of characters, including (mostly) ones that I didn't want to include for the users in question. Removing content from the decks seemed wrong. Trying to make an…

@jaredklewis I’d love to know if you have a way to fix the pain points amluto described. I’ve had some of the same struggles with this, in particular when making a deck that I wanted my kids to each be able to use individually, but also be able to keep updating. It seemed like a lot of work every time I wanted to make any change to the deck. This was a few years ago and I don’t remember the details, but it’d be great to know if there’s some streamlined way to keep editing a deck and have the updates show up for multiple users, kind of like they are subscribed to it. I bet there is a way to do this, and I just didn’t figure it out.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#510

Post by AJayWalker »

echan00 wrote: post #445
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”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…

Shameless plug of my language app, dangerous. Our language app is largely based on using LLMs and spaced-repetition. We explain the context behind every word and phrase, provide additional usage examples and cultural notes, and also use speech recognition to test recall and pronunciation. We're invite-only at the moment, but happy to pass along invite codes to anybody who may find it useful. https://apps.apple.com/us…

Also interested if you have an invite!
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