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

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

#21

Post by btilly »

elai wrote: post #15
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?

I'm not sure what details to go into. Being reminded of something as we're forgetting it pushes that thing into longer term memory. It also internalizes the lesson. This applies to both rote facts and intellectual ideas. If you think of it as fact memorization, then you're missing the real power.

There are a lot of things you need to learn to master a mathematical topic. You need to learn definitions and terminology. You need to learn key theorems. You should be able to apply procedures and derive formulas. At a higher level you need to learn available proof techniques and the key ideas behind important proofs.

Of course learning these things intellectually is not quite sufficient. You need skills as well. However failing to learn these things will keep you from learning the topic. And that is where most students fall down.

This is particularly true in subjects that build on themselves like mathematics. If you missed an important point earlier, you may develop a bigger misconception about a current topic that will make it impossible to learn a future one. Anyone who has tutored students should be aware of this.

As for what to review, students did not get the same questions over and over again. Instead I gave them questions from the same section over and over again. Since I only asked a few questions from the current day's section, there were always plenty of questions left to go back to for future homework sets. As a bonus doing many kinds of questions at the same time makes connections obvious. When a single homework set asks you to solve a set of equations, find a basis for a vector space, and invert a matrix, you see how they tie together.

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

#22

Post by btilly »

tocomment wrote: post #14
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.

I'll think about it. I won't get around to it in the near future though, sorry.

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

#23

Post by btilly »

imajes wrote: post #20
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. :)

Actually you should be glad that I'm not your teacher. I set a number of goals for that course around learning, and forgot to set any around making the students happy. I met the goals I set but...

I'm sure that if I had stayed in academia I would have sorted out those kinds of issues. However it is clear to me that I'm much happier not being an academic.

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

#24

Post by asdf1011 »

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

Anki is a great spaced repetition tool; despite only using it for 20 minutes each day to remember the Japanese Kanji, it has resulted in me remembering a lot of characters (but English -> Kanji and vice versa).

If you're looking to memorise a lot of data, it's definitely worth a look (runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux).

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

#26

Post by ghshephard »

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…

What an excellent Hacker News Post. Please do write up a bit more about your method, what your students got out of the course specifically, and whether you've had success with it in other places. You have a clean, readable, and interesting writing style.

I think we can all recall a teacher or teachers in our life who truly made a difference in teaching us something - sometimes _despite_ our interest (or lack thereof) of learning it.

I was forced in University to take a course in Propositional Calculus (it was a breadth requirement for computing science) - it was mid-day so I attended the class (unlike early morning classes in which my attendance was abysmal) - I went in with zero desire - no coding, or even math. But, the timing was right so I just sat in the class.

The instructor spent thirteen weeks walking us through Reductio Ad absurdum proof, tautologies, conditional proofs, etc.. He gave us homework assignments that built on earlier knowledge, and just as we were getting into new material, he'd throw some earlier sequent proofs at us to solve and refresh our memories.

Here is the thing - I had _no_ interest in this course, the only thing going for it was it's timing, and repetition. I was _killing_ myself trying to learn integration by parts, linear algebra, discrete math, spending 5 hours outside of class for every hour in class trying to master those other course, and basically just sitting in this one distraction course. I was a C+ student in the math courses (after _massive_ effort) - I walked out of the Propositional Calculus course with an A+.

Sixteen years later I look back at University and can honestly say that the most useful course, that I _continue_ to have rock solid knowledge of PLUS use almost every single hour of the day was that stupid Philosphy 210 Propositional Calculus course. For the life of me I can't remember much of graph theory, and wouldn't be able to invert a matrix if you held a gun to my head, but, I'll sit in a meeting and see a ton of possible alternative and immediately start applying Disjunction elimination to break us out of a log jam.

There really is something to this spacing method.

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

#27

Post by mwerty »

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

I tried anki and while I liked it, I want to be interrupted while working on code/browsing to test/reinforce. Is there an app that does that?

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

#28

Post by andymism »

mwerty wrote: post #27
cesare wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I tried anki and while I liked it, I want to be interrupted while working on code/browsing to test/reinforce. Is there an app that does that?

I'm curious why you want to be interrupted while coding to test be tested. That kind of task switching would be horrible for me and is the reason why I have email turned off during coding sessions.

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

#29

Post by andymism »

sandGorgon wrote: post #16
cesare wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks for the rec! The first thing I'm going to be using Mnemosyne for is scheduling guitar practice. I often forget the number of songs and scales that I actually know. Eventually, they get dusty enough that I won't remember them at all. I'm hoping this will help me to retain much better.

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

#30

Post by trapper »

sandGorgon wrote: post #16
cesare wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I use this when learning a new subject. It's insanely good
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