Content-Aware Spaced Repetition • Hacker News Board

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#41

Post by HDMI_Cable » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 8:56 AM UTC

ran3000 wrote: post #38

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #26

| The main challenge in building content-aware memory models is lack of data. To my knowledge, no publicly available dataset exists that contains real-world usage data with both card textual content and review histories. I wonder if the author has ever considered reaching out to makers of Anki decks used by premeds and medical students like the AnKing [1]. They create Anki decks for users studying the MCAT and variou…

It would be awesome to work on that data. I'm afraid of the privacy implications though.

What sort of privacy implications? I'd imagine that Anki data would be relatively privacy-concern free, as it contains no PII, and for the AnKing decks, all of the content is standardized and so wouldn't contain personal notes. Though, having never worked with this data, please let me know if I'm wrong!

Also, having used those decks in the past, and downloaded the add-on/look at the monetization structure of developers like the AnKing, I would be very surprised if aggregate data on review statistics wasn't collected in some way. I.e., if the AnKing is collecting this data already to design better decks/understand which cards are the hardest—probably to target individual support—then I imagine that collecting some de-anonymized version of that data wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Plus, considering that all of the developers of AnKing-style decks are all doctors, they probably have a pretty good grasp at handling PII and could (hopefully) make pretty sound decisions on whether to give you access :)

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#42

Post by barrell » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 9:05 AM UTC

echo_time wrote: post #39

barrell wrote: post #25

I’ve been working on https://phrasing.app for a while now, including many iterations of the SRS. It’s been my experience that most of these sorts of improvements are really imperceptible. While I use FSRS as a base, and I’m very happy with the results it provides, it’s really only a few percentage points off of the SM-2 algorithm from the 90s. It’s slightly less stressful, definitely more accurate, but I think only a…

This looks incredible, and its obvious that a lot of work has been done, but in exploring it I notice a lot of things that make me hesitate to spend the money! First, in the section "Expressions are flashcards on steroids", the flavor text on each element (Translations, Audio, etc) is identical. Next, I look at the pricing and get one idea. Then when I create an account and go to upgrade, I see completely different p…

What the heck? Thank you for bringing the flavor text issue to my attention. You have no idea how long I spent making sure the copy on each of those to make sure they were unique, fit all screen sizes, etc. I have no idea what happened and I’m tragically upset now XD

The “say something about comprehensible input” was indeed a funny copy issue I found a few weeks ago. edit: found and fixed! original: I thought I fixed it though, there must be a screen size that needs to be updated. I’ll look for it, but it’s a framer website so I can’t grep. Let me know if you find it again!

Indeed I just launched the new page with the new pricing. I have two major tasks this week, the second of which is to update the pricing flow to match the new prices on the home page.

It’s a one man show and fully bootstrapped, so apologies about the disarray. Everything takes a month or two to migrate when you do all the design, marketing, engineering, support, and bug fixes yourself!

EDIT: Both the flavor text and the “say something about ci” have been fixed. The upgrade flow will take a few days. I am planning to grandfather everyone who signs up for the old plan ($10pm) into the new plan ($20pm) at the old price :)

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#43

Post by ran3000 » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 9:09 AM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #20

joshdavham wrote: post #9

I've been thinking about this for a while too as an FSRS developer [1]. In general, we can think of a spaced repetition system as being (i) Content-aware vs. Content-agnostic and (ii) Deck-aware vs. Deck-agnostic Content-aware systems care about what you're studying (language, medecine, etc) while Content-agnostic systems don't care about what you're studying. Deck-aware systems consider each card in the context of t…

I ran into a question a while ago that I couldn't find a good answer to, and while it's not exactly on topic this seems like a good place to ask it. I was working in a detail rich context, where there were a lot of items, about which there were a lot of facts that mostly didn't change but only mostly. Getting a snapshot of these details into approximately everyone's head seemed like a job for spaced repetition, and I…

This specific problem gave us lots of headache while building https://rember.com We don't have a good solution yet. My hope is that something like content-aware memory models solve the problem at a lower level, so we don't have to worry about it at the product level.

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#44

Post by kebsup » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 9:14 AM UTC

emsixteen wrote: post #17

kebsup wrote: post #14

I'm building a SRS language learning app [1] so I've thought about this topic a bit, but I've come to a conclusion that srs algorithms might be just a nerd optimization obsession. My app has "stupid" 1,3,7,15,30 or something like that intervals, and the reality is that if I know a card, I can swipe it within 2 seconds, and if I just barely know it, I can spend 30 seconds on it. So optimizing the algorithm such that e…

This site makes my (more than good) computer's browser crawl to a halt.

Thank you for the report! I was thinking of redoing the landing page for a while anyway. Are you using a niche browser or something like that? I haven't had anyone experience this issue nor was I able to reproduce it.

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#45

Post by ran3000 » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 9:18 AM UTC

jeffalyanak wrote: post #15

In the language learning world there are some great tools already for adding content-awareness. AnkiMorphs[1] will analyze the morphemes in your sentences and, taking into account the interval of each card as a sign of how well you know each one, will re-order your new cards to, ideally, present you with cards that have only one unknown word. It doesn't do anything to affect the FSRS directly—it only changes the orde…

Reading the thread, I definitely overlooked language learning solutions. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#46

Post by emsixteen » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

kebsup wrote: post #44

emsixteen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This site makes my (more than good) computer's browser crawl to a halt.

Thank you for the report! I was thinking of redoing the landing page for a while anyway. Are you using a niche browser or something like that? I haven't had anyone experience this issue nor was I able to reproduce it.

Firefox Dev Edition, nothing odd imo.

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#47

Post by ran3000 » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 9:41 AM UTC

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #41

ran3000 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be awesome to work on that data. I'm afraid of the privacy implications though.

What sort of privacy implications? I'd imagine that Anki data would be relatively privacy-concern free, as it contains no PII, and for the AnKing decks, all of the content is standardized and so wouldn't contain personal notes. Though, having never worked with this data, please let me know if I'm wrong! Also, having used those decks in the past, and downloaded the add-on/look at the monetization structure of develope…

You're right, it might work by restricting to just AnKing data. My concern was around other, possibly personal, cards making their way into the dataset.

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#48

Post by xpe » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

kebsup wrote: post #14

I'm building a SRS language learning app [1] so I've thought about this topic a bit, but I've come to a conclusion that srs algorithms might be just a nerd optimization obsession. My app has "stupid" 1,3,7,15,30 or something like that intervals, and the reality is that if I know a card, I can swipe it within 2 seconds, and if I just barely know it, I can spend 30 seconds on it. So optimizing the algorithm such that e…

Don’t fool yourself into thinking a suboptimal SRS is going to be optimal at the motivational aspect. If a user needs a self-confidence boost during a flash card session, this should be a design choice, not due to poor performance of the core SRS algorithm.

Choose your SRS algorithm to best predict what a user knows and when they’re likely to forget it.

If your application decides that it wants to throw some softballs, that’s an application level decision. If you care about psychology and motivation, build a really good algorithm for that. Then blend SRS with motivation as desired.

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#49

Post by Revisional_Sin » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 9:52 AM UTC

barrell wrote: post #25

I’ve been working on https://phrasing.app for a while now, including many iterations of the SRS. It’s been my experience that most of these sorts of improvements are really imperceptible. While I use FSRS as a base, and I’m very happy with the results it provides, it’s really only a few percentage points off of the SM-2 algorithm from the 90s. It’s slightly less stressful, definitely more accurate, but I think only a…

FYI, this looks awful on mobile. (Chrome on a pixel).

Re: Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

#50

Post by huhtenberg » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 10:04 AM UTC

To help with language learning I tried Anki, didn't like the UX and ended up writing my own SRS, from scratch.

One thing that becomes very obvious very quickly is that all cards derived from the same piece of information should be treated as a group. The last thing you'd want is to see "a cow / ?" quickly followed by "una mucca / ?". This is just pointless.

So while I appreciate the in-depth write-up by the author, I must say that its main insight - that the scheduling needs to account for the inter-card dependencies - lies right there on the surface. The fact that Anki doesn't support this doesn't make it any less obvious.