Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm • Hacker News Board

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#11

Post by cesare » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 1:24 AM UTC

kiba wrote: post #10

btilly wrote: post #2

In grad school I managed to take advantage of the pacing effect in an educational setting. I was teaching linear algebra. What I did was make the homework incremental - 1/3 of homework on today's material, 1/3 on the previous week, and 1/3 anything in the course. Those thirds were in increasing order of difficulty. I also started every class with a question/answer period. The rules were simple, the questioning will l…

This remind me of a drawing book called "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". It teaches people how to draw realistically using techniques like contour drawing among other stuff. However, middle school art teachers seem stuck in their little art project. I am not sure about high school, but it doesn't look like they teach the skills.

> It teaches people how to draw realistically using techniques like contour drawing among other stuff.

A great book. One of the exercises is to copy a picture turned 180 degrees, so that you're drawing exactly what you're seeing without the interference of your mind's prior knowledge of the subject.

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#12

Post by klipt » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 2:08 AM UTC

There's at least one maker of language courses (Pimsleur) which use the pacing effect. Unfortunately they're audio only, which at least for me isn't nearly as effective as a combination of audio and writing.

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#13

Post by peregrine » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 2:17 AM UTC

cesare wrote: post #9

billswift wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You beat to it. I've had the site on my favorites list for months, it's got more information than the article, but it wasn't anywhere near convincing enough to get me to actually spend any money. Maybe I'll go through it again and see.

Have you tried Anki? (it's open source, see GiraffeNecktie comment). I've just downloaded it. There are also some decks shared by people (mostly for natural languages) that you can download from the app itself.

And GRE vocabulary, I don't even need to take the GRE(maybe) but I think I will study these, improve my vocabulary.

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#14

Post by tocomment » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 2:31 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #2

In grad school I managed to take advantage of the pacing effect in an educational setting. I was teaching linear algebra. What I did was make the homework incremental - 1/3 of homework on today's material, 1/3 on the previous week, and 1/3 anything in the course. Those thirds were in increasing order of difficulty. I also started every class with a question/answer period. The rules were simple, the questioning will l…

If you made this story into a blog post, people would listen. (I'm actually serious, it's an interesting story and a lot of people might benefit from hearing more of the details and the thought process behind it.

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#15

Post by elai » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 2:39 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #2

In grad school I managed to take advantage of the pacing effect in an educational setting. I was teaching linear algebra. What I did was make the homework incremental - 1/3 of homework on today's material, 1/3 on the previous week, and 1/3 anything in the course. Those thirds were in increasing order of difficulty. I also started every class with a question/answer period. The rules were simple, the questioning will l…

Could you go into more details into SRS for math? "Fact Memorizing" type systems seem to fit well with things like supermemo (languages, law, history, biology, a bunch of sciences), but not so much with things like math (other than memorizing formulas). And did you really add homework questions like find the kernel of this subspace in the first few weeks of the course?

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#16

Post by sandGorgon » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 2:45 AM UTC

cesare wrote: post #7

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #4

This article is written as if SuperMemo were the only software that uses spaced repetition (SRS) algorithms for learning. Actually there are quite a number of other programs out there including some that are free or open source. I've used SuperMemo for years on my Palm and found it very useful for learning French but the software (at least for the Palm) hasn't been updated for many years and doesn't give the user any…

Thanks. I was just wondering if there was a similar open source project. Anki: http://ichi2.net/anki/ Wikipedia entry about this technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

Mnemosyne is actually very good

http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/

it works on Win, Mac and Linux - written in Python

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#17

Post by tocomment » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 3:01 AM UTC

Is there someone I can try this out for free? Are there ready made flashcards for something useful to learn?

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#18

Post by nwinter » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 3:39 AM UTC

This is what we do at http://www.skritter.com for Chinese and Japanese. Spaced repetition is definitely still in the geek realm, though. Even after automating almost everything (vocab creation, addition, even grading), there are still a lot of people who don't want to practice on the computer, or aren't as interested in efficiency of the learning process. I think as spaced repetition moves away from raw SRS like SuperMemo and toward integration with classrooms, textbooks, and other software that provides content as well, we will start to see more widespread adoption and recognition of its power.

There was a recent thread here about whether SRS will evolve to appeal to non-programmers: http://globalmaverick.org/archives/169-repetitio-est-mater-s...

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#19

Post by stevenj » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 3:51 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #2

In grad school I managed to take advantage of the pacing effect in an educational setting. I was teaching linear algebra. What I did was make the homework incremental - 1/3 of homework on today's material, 1/3 on the previous week, and 1/3 anything in the course. Those thirds were in increasing order of difficulty. I also started every class with a question/answer period. The rules were simple, the questioning will l…

I think I learned more about retention (for me personally) by reading your comment than by reading the article.

Thanks for sharing.

Re: Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

#20

Post by imajes » Sat, Sep 12, 2009, 3:59 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #2

In grad school I managed to take advantage of the pacing effect in an educational setting. I was teaching linear algebra. What I did was make the homework incremental - 1/3 of homework on today's material, 1/3 on the previous week, and 1/3 anything in the course. Those thirds were in increasing order of difficulty. I also started every class with a question/answer period. The rules were simple, the questioning will l…

I wish you were my teacher. That's a theory of education I've been pondering about for ages. Glad to see it formalized like this. Please consider running for office and fixing how we go about learning. :)