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A love letter to flashcards

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Re: A love letter to flashcards

#61

Post by sn9 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #42

I once took a psychology course with my girlfriend at the time. She and her pals would be up all night studying with flashcards. I'd just walk into class, learn about it, never study, and get A's on the tests. When they asked me how I was doing it I explained that I'm there to learn understand the topic and I don't give a damn about the test. So I just let my curiosity lead the way, it causes me to ask questions in a…

You were actually using spaced repetition implicitly whereas they were using flashcards to cram.

The issue wasn't the flashcards but their own failure to use them effectively.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#62

Post by sn9 »

PandaRider wrote: post #2

> From this perspective, fields that require deep understanding, like math, require memory just as fields with a breadth of shallow knowledge do, though in different ways. I'm interested in understanding how others use Anki for conceptual subjects like pure math or physics. I believe many fundamental rules in Spaced Repetition (e.g. like keeping cards concise) are thrown out the window for conceptual subjects.

You can take advantage of spaced repetition just for scheduling the review of proofs and problems you've solved before.

By review, I mean attempting to solve them like you're seeing the problem statement for the first time.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#63

Post by pferde »

cwnyth wrote: post #44
helterskelter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practicing your retrieval is actually one of the best ways to retain knowledge of something. Flashcard programs like Anki are really great because it identifies where you need more work and drills you on your weak points -- it feels awkward working constantly on your weak points, but you get quantifiably better results with the flashcard method it uses. Some people criticize flashcards as optimizing for rote memoriza…

My problem with Anki is that it's very, very inefficient. It will take much more time and effort to memorize the vocabulary words you learn, and losing those words is very quick. It's much better to use SRS with actual and varied sentences.

I have the exact opposite experience with Anki. I use it to memorize vocabulary of a language I'm learning, a language completely different to other languages I know, and my retention before and after I started using Anki is night and day. Frankly, I was floored once I realized how much faster I was learning, and how easily I can recall even words I last practiced or used months ago.

I make and maintain my own cards/notes, which I think is part of why it works so well - it's tailored to my learning, not to someone else's.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#64

Post by pessimizer »

potro wrote: post #59
SubmarineClub wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you can just…create Anki cards with sentences, right? Anki doesn’t force you to make cards with vocab words in isolation.

It doesn't but it also will not create a different sentence to you to practice a word. I tried this (use sentences instead of words), it sucks: you spend more time per card, but you learn less efficient, as you learn not just a word but all the hints coming from the same sentence. I wrote my own program 2 years ago, that generates new sentence on each review using AI (at that time I used Anki as scheduler). That was…

> It doesn't but it also will not create a different sentence to you to practice a word.

Anki doesn't create either words or sentences. Drilling words doesn't work. You've drilled words and found it doesn't work. Try using clozes. It is not "less efficient" than drilling words, because drilling words does not work.

No word in French means anything in English. The meanings of words are just surveys of the contexts in which they are used, and French words are used in French contexts. Learning that a French word means an English word is just bad information that is cluttering up your brain.

If you're learning Spanish, French, German or Italian, try these.

https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/

20,000 clozes, words are repeated all the time, treat them as disposable. Read the sentences out loud and say the answers out loud to keep yourself honest.

edit: you don't need AI to generate sentences. There are already sentences available in every language.

https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-d...

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#65

Post by pessimizer »

xhevahir wrote: post #57

> Most of my cards are handwritten by me and accommodate my brain. I'm guessing from all the talk about Anki that people are missing this part. I think these frictionless, digital replacements for note cards are solving the wrong problem. You're never going to spend more time on a given flashcard, and better absorb the information on it, than the first time, when you're sitting there making the thing. Making this ste…

I think it's better not to fall in love with any single flashcard. Mature them and forget about them. You're not trying to learn flashcards, you're trying to learn facts and skills.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#66

Post by IndySun »

deviation wrote: post #15

I use Anki to learn French, Chess openings/tactics/techniques, to unscramble letters for scrabble, for Pub Trivia... The options are kind of limitless. As a mid-30s guy who has well passed the neuroplasticity of his teen years, it's a godsend for me. To echo the author's thoughts though, I can't prove empirically that I learn more effectively using Anki (or spaced repetition) than other methods... Only anecdotally. I…

>now I'm B2 certified in French

Did you get there using only Anki? If yes, I need to persevere.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#67

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

SubmarineClub wrote: post #56
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #42

I once took a psychology course with my girlfriend at the time. She and her pals would be up all night studying with flashcards. I'd just walk into class, learn about it, never study, and get A's on the tests. When they asked me how I was doing it I explained that I'm there to learn understand the topic and I don't give a damn about the test. So I just let my curiosity lead the way, it causes me to ask questions in a…

I don’t know…I think even if someone was really interested in something like organic chemistry or biochem, unless they had a very very abnormal memory they’d get wrecked on an exam without studying. I used SRS when studying for OChem and got the highest grade across all sections my prof was teaching.

Well, I'm taking OChem next semester, so I guess we'll see.

And to be clear I don't mean "don't study" I just think that it's going to be better to connect each chemical I need to memorize to something I already understand about biochemistry though little research projects. What I end up with might end up looking a fair bit like flash cards, but I don't intend to flash them, it's the making that does it.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#68

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

nonethewiser wrote: post #53
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #42

I once took a psychology course with my girlfriend at the time. She and her pals would be up all night studying with flashcards. I'd just walk into class, learn about it, never study, and get A's on the tests. When they asked me how I was doing it I explained that I'm there to learn understand the topic and I don't give a damn about the test. So I just let my curiosity lead the way, it causes me to ask questions in a…

You just described a terrible strategy for wrote memorization. You did better than they did because the test didn’t test wrote memorization.

Well to that I'd say, work with your professors to prevent tests that test wrote memorization from being assigned.

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#69

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

jagraff wrote: post #49
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #42

I once took a psychology course with my girlfriend at the time. She and her pals would be up all night studying with flashcards. I'd just walk into class, learn about it, never study, and get A's on the tests. When they asked me how I was doing it I explained that I'm there to learn understand the topic and I don't give a damn about the test. So I just let my curiosity lead the way, it causes me to ask questions in a…

What about classes that weren't interesting to you, but you had to pass anyway? Personally I was the same as you for classes that I found interesting, but for other required classes I went for the shallow understanding, memorize for the test approach.

I don't take those classes, what would be the point?

Re: A love letter to flashcards

#70

Post by j45 »

wisemanwillhear wrote: post #51
deviation wrote: post #15

I use Anki to learn French, Chess openings/tactics/techniques, to unscramble letters for scrabble, for Pub Trivia... The options are kind of limitless. As a mid-30s guy who has well passed the neuroplasticity of his teen years, it's a godsend for me. To echo the author's thoughts though, I can't prove empirically that I learn more effectively using Anki (or spaced repetition) than other methods... Only anecdotally. I…

I'm glad the article acknowledges that flashcards are just one small part of learning. When I first got into spaced repetition, first with the Mnemosyne Project and later switching to Anki, I discovered that the efficiency I imagined was partially illusory. * Memorizing things often takes much more time than learning things naturally as you use them because it takes extra time out of your day. * I often lacked the as…

Memorizing becomes easier after understanding. My guess is understanding things, not just what they mean, but how they work, or interact with other concepts, speeds up repetition quicker because that is what's firing when renewing it.
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