Spaced repetition for study and learning

But I'd say that if there's some are you'd like to work in that requires specific knowledge that fits well within SRS, why would you not? As opposed to trying to learn and recall anything that might possibly be useful, ever.

The anecdote where Hamming went to Bode's office to talk about Turkey was like a lightning ! Is it possible to see so many great names in one paragraph !

I've always seen some analogies in things with half-life and the charge and discharge of capacitors.

I'll give an example: I've always thought about learning as a capacitor charging through a resistance, and thought about the RC constant. In my mind, it takes relatively a short period of time to get to 63.2%, but it takes a very long time to get from 63.2% (it will never reach that, since it's an exponential).

What this tells me about learning ? Pick a field and then decide how much do you want to master it. Then know that it'll take you longer to get from 63.2% to 100% (which you will never achieve). An example would be the fact that English is my fifth language, which I only started speaking in 2009. Do I want to be an English major and write in a Kipling way, or do I want to have a command good enough to get my message to you (and possibly learn other languages) ?

It depends, but I find it a fascinating subject.

The other funny thing is that I used a mix of cramming and spaced repetition to study: I used to skip college for a year, and then get a month and go hard-core. Five courses. I'd draw a pentagon with the five courses and study two courses a day. 1,2 - 3,4 - 5,1 - 2,3 - 4,5 - 1,2 ...

You'll notice that I go back to each module each other day. The results I got from that are just astounding, as I was capable to memorize entire pages, chapters and I would see them. I would know exactly where I've written my notes on which pages. I aced the final exam of physics and had the best grade with questions that were never asked before (it was theory, and no 'values' or 'calculations' were there). I was writing things I've never written before, but I knew my maths checked out because I just knew. These weren't exercises or something.. I've been accused of cheating many times. A part of me found it insulting, the other part found it flattering as you only accuse someone of cheating if what he did was an accomplishment.

'cperciva noted this effect from his time at Oxford...

"When I tell North Americans about my time at Oxford University, one aspect of its undergraduate program inevitably surprises them: Final examinations. Rather than writing examinations at the end of each term, students in most subjects write a single set of examinations at the end of their final year, on which their entire degree performance is measured. (In recent years, some subjects have switched to annual examinations.) As terrifying as this might sound, the system has some merits: Whereas many students at institutions with termly examinations study the day before an exam and forget the material the day after the exam, attempting to 'cram' three years worth of material at once is largely an exercise in futility; as such, Oxford's examinations often provide a better measure of how much material a student has learned and retained. Given some of the conversations I've had with — and code I've seen from — people who have received computer science degrees from major universities and are actively working as software developers, I think that last part is very important: There's a lot of people out there who have forgotten some very basic — and very important — material" (http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-10-08-software-developm...).

You can obviously practice spaced repetition regardless of your school's exam structure, and Cal Newport specifies a method for doing this in "The Art of Stealth Studying: How To Earn a 4.0 With Only 1.0 Hours of Work" (http://calnewport.com/blog/2007/10/03/the-art-of-stealth-stu...).

However, most students are unaware of this method nor have the disciple to follow it on their own so to realize its benefits on a mass scale, we would need to revamp the education system around these principles.

And as 'qwern noted, sleep is a key factor in spaced repetition learning. Research shows sleep is when the brain prunes itself by separating signal from noise...

"Sleep researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health believe it is more evidence for their theory of 'synaptic homeostasis.' This is the idea that synapses grow stronger when we're awake as we learn and adapt to an ever-changing the environment, that sleep refreshes the brain by bringing synapses back to a lower level of strength. This is important because larger synapses consume a lot of energy, occupy more space and require more supplies, including the proteins examined in this study."

"Sleep — by allowing synaptic downscaling — saves energy, space and material, and clears away unnecessary 'noise' from the previous day, the researchers believe. The fresh brain is then ready to learn again in the morning" (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402143455.ht...).

The field of intelligent tutoring systems is essentially how to break up a problem and estimate your knowledge on each piece (called a "knowledge component"), and then how to instruct based on the resulting student model. I got started by reading about Andes physics tutor: http://oli.cmu.edu/wp-oli/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/VanLehn... but there are many examples.

Most of the research doesn't actually incorporate spaced repetition. One exception is Philip Pavlik's work: http://optimallearning.org/

It's still a lot of effort to break things down into knowledge components and figure out the sequencing and instruction. That's why companies like Carnegie Learning and Knewton exist, and even those are only targeting elementary or intro level material for now.