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Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

ankisrs.net

121–130 of 141 posts

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#121
post #71

A lot of people point out other software. The whole point is the algorithm [1] which how Anki schedules your cards. It is based on Supermemo's [2], and improved a lot over the years, so I think it's the most optimal from all of the SRS software's out there. Also I think Anki has a very simple UI, not sure how people can find it complicated. You just add cards, and by review you press a button, that's all. Cards are j…

For learning languages, I used to make my own flashcards and then search audio that contained the word. Then I discovered that there are apps with pre-filled cards that already have the audio such as MosaLingua ( http://www.mosalingua.com/en ).

I'm using MosaLingua right now to learn French. The fact that it comes with sounds for each flash card is a really useful if you don't want to learn words with the wrong pronunciation

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#122
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely helps a lot for axioms, basic definitions, basic theorems, distribution functions and for things you "get wrong every time" etc., but everything beyond that it's inferior to exercises. As an example: I remember learning set theory and the subset relations of the number sets much faster than anyone else in my class.

One hack I've been using is making cards like "How to solve exercise X on Book Y, page Z?". For me, doing a lot of exercises only once has worked worse than doing some key exercises more than once, and by using spaced repetition software (Anki, Flashcards Deluxe, etc) you can leverage its systems to get an optimized "schedule" for solving/revisiting exercises for math, physics, etc, so you don't have to worry about t…

What a brilliant idea!

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#123
post #35
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am using memrise.com which works pretty well to learn some vocabulary. You can learn pre-made lists contributed by users, and does not require any set up.

Have a look at Duolingo if you like Memrise, it's a more in depth language learning tool that uses the same kind of ideas.

I really want to use Duolingo, unfortunately I am learning Mandarin, and it is not available yet. It has been announced, a while ago, that it was in their todo list, but I don't know when it will actually be there. It is not even in the beta language section yet.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#125
post #78
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used Anki a lot to learn Japanese. I think that the principle is not that great for languages. It helped me to remember the vocabulary and the kanji, but it only help me to acquire visual memory. When I hear Japanese, I am way too slow to make the relationship between the Japanese word and the associated concept. What comes to my mind first is the French word (my native language) and now I feel like I am learn…

Did you use audio cards? My Japanese listening is pretty good as a result of learning all my vocab through anki with separate image, kanji and audio cards.

I did, but only recently. My listening is improving, but until that Japanese was for me only a written language. Also, it's easy to create cards from a dictionary, but it is more complicated to find audio resources for specific vocabulary (maybe it is possible to get them from sites like forvo.com). I wish I had taken a more diversified approach earlier. The first months/years, I almost only used Anki and a grammar book. A better approach maybe would have been to start from simple texts or dialogues.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#126

Is there a cli version of anki ? a quick google search session didn't give any hint, which means plausible negative.

What do you mean by "a cli version"? A version that would run in a terminal? Or a version that would present one card when the command is invoked? In this case, how would the user enter the answer (again, hard, good, easy)? It would require Anki a way to bind this answer to the right card (the algorithm for choosing a card should be deterministic, or a card ID should be passed to the command for answering).

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#127

Is there a cli version of anki ? a quick google search session didn't give any hint, which means plausible negative.

What do you mean by "a cli version"? A version that would run in a terminal? Or a version that would present one card when the command is invoked? In this case, how would the user enter the answer (again, hard, good, easy)? It would require Anki a way to bind this answer to the right card (the algorithm for choosing a card should be deterministic, or a card ID should be passed to the command for answering).

Simply a shell / terminal TUI instead of a window/mouse GUI

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#128

My friend and I have been using this for years. My friend took it pretty serious this year: http://rs.io/2014/04/05/anki-10000-cards-later.html It's really useful for courses in college, especially Language, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics for definitions, pronunciations, systems, etc. Math and Computer Science is a bit hard since a lot of that requires practice and it takes time to figure out how to structure those…

I've been using a similar method to learn some German vocabulary for about 8 months now (using Flashcards Deluxe, not Anki, though), and I could specially relate to the "Two-way connections" section of your friend's article. For example, my deck is currently German to English. As an experiment, once I reversed the deck for a while (making it English to German) and suddenly it became much harder. Maybe the solution is…

I'm been using Anki in the last couple of years and I got from zero to more than 4000 cards. The best way to effectively learn new words for me it's put the word with the English definition and than the same word with the translation in your original language. Of course not all the words require this.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me you encrypt your anki deck, or something.... This could be a huge problem if your phone/laptop/whatever is stolen.

I was also concerned about this issue, and have instead taken a nice medium path: After changing a password, I would try to log into the service at approximately the same intervals the Anki algorithm dictates until I feel the interval is long enough (i.e. I can reproduce it after two weeks with no reminder, which corresponds to a forgetting curve of about a month later). Just because I won't use the program doesn't m…

That's brilliant!

To avoid doing it on your phone, could you put those cards in a separate deck, or use tagging?

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great tool for memorizing things that need to be rote-memorized. Chinese characters often fall into that category. Arcane Chemistry vocabulary probably do as well. It's just a flash card system on steroids. If you know how to use a flash card system appropriately then this is a pretty powerful substitute.

Certainly flash card systems shine on things that need to be rote-memorized, but you can "hack" the system by engineering your questions in a certain way, like the "Why" questions mentioned by the author of linked article on parent comment.

It's just a review tool designed for storing Question / Answer pairs to your long-term memory. Nothing else.

If that means using it to review and remember specific answers to WHY questions (Why is the sky blue?) for the rest of your life, all power to you. Keep reviewing. However, I think the moment you start asking these conceptual questions you're no longer just trying to remember - you're trying to understand. That's not what flash-cards are designed for.

Instead, you might actually want to look at the sky. Do experiments. Meet experts.

In the process, you will come up with new questions and new answers to old questions. More importantly, as a result of this adventure you will not only remember, but also learn. I wonder if Newton used flash-cards.

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