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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

#71

Post by joe_the_user »

briancooley wrote: post #57
Alex3917 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you made this story into a blog post, people would listen." That's what I hate about people. What makes people pay attention isn't the ideas themselves, but whether it looks like you worked hard in writing it. I've made comments on HN that no one paid any attention to, and then turned them into blog posts and had them get to the top of Reddit or Digg or whatever. Exact same ideas, all I did was visually change th…

* all I did was visually change the text to make it look more professionally laid out, and carefully rework some of the phrasing to make it sound better to the ear. (Plus add a couple really good first sentences and a good headline.)* Those changes are non-trivial. Layout and writing style are integral components in the user interface for comprehending text.

Yes,

There are a lot of hn news posts I've made that I think I could make into blog posts or even articles. But I can't claim they already are in a form people will pay attention to.

For example, the posts I'm most proud of generally get few mods whereas simplistic but irrefutable objections to some other story tend to get the highest mods. But that's logical. People just aren't reading the ten or fifty posts on a paper to find the gems. They might read the first that way if you're lucky. Otherwise, they are more likely to skim. Even on the web, the writer has to present their ideas so they are accessible.

(And here I go again. This post will get far less mods than statements like "where's your evidence")

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

#72

Post by joe_the_user »

ghshephard wrote: post #26
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)…

It could also be that propositional calculus is dead simple - or at least that has always been my impression of it. Calculus and linear algebra work on complex problems in a large domain. Propositional calculus has a small domain and fairly simple theories.

I think in general, the knowledge domain is important. Linear algebra is a very unified field by itself but when you get courses that involve a grab bag of algebra, linear algebra, trigonometry and calculus, I think the "stew" they present is incredibly hard to comprehend on a high level and students wind-up either failing or learning by a horrible kind of rote.

Uh, this is from biased personal experience. I indeed only taught one college math course when I doing my math MA, it was "Trignometry". It was a complete failure. I still blame the "grab bag" quality of the material but perhaps I was to blame instead.

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

#73

Post by martincmartin »

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…

It's sad that professors are promoted for research, rather than either research or teaching. It amazes me that the private U.S. universities that are most highly ranked for undergraduate education are the ones with the best research.

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

#75

Post by hyperbovine »

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

+1 for Anki. I loaded up a list of GRE vocabulary words in Anki, studied it for three months, and got a 1600. I probably spent two hours studying for other portions of the test. Takeaways: 1) SRS works; 2) the GRE is a joke :)

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

#76

Post by gwern »

cgs wrote: post #40

One thing I've never bothered to do is learn an API of X language really well. Because, I thought, I'll just look up whatever I don't know. But I'm constantly stopping to look things up and it really slows me down. Now I'm beginning to think there's really some value in having a strong command of an API. Has anyone tried using an SRS tool to help with this? Or is it simply a matter of not having enough experience wit…

Actually, the SuperMemo site covers just this topic: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/programming.htm

tl;dr: if you will spend more than 5 minutes looking it up or trying to remember it over the next 10/20 years, then it's a net gain to memorize it in a SRS.

I find this plausible, but I'm not sure 5 minutes is right - I understand from Anki users (Anki's statistics include 'how much total time ever have I spent looking at/on this particular card') that a card will cost you more than 5 minutes, and more like 10 minutes.

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

#77

Post by gwern »

idigthought wrote: post #25

Is there a good os x and iphone application for this? I'm looking particularly for one that supports images and LaTeX.

There are a number of SRS clones already produced for the iPhone in the store (Mnemosyne, I understand, works fine on OS X); there's also a Mnemosyne clone in early development for the iPhone.

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

#78

Post by eob »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #41
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do, as I am sure there are a bunch of us who would love to hear more about it.

I'd love to hear about it as soon as possible (i.e., early enough in the semester for me to act on it). I'm already updating webassign to follow your suggestion, current material + old stuff each week. Anything else you did (beyond SRS) would also be useful to know.

You don't need someone to tell you what to do -- he/she already gave you the general idea.

Why can't you be similarly creative with your class and run with it?

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

#79

Post by eob »

juvenn wrote: post #54
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 a good self-teacher would be better a teacher than who just hold some fancy degrees. Since good self-teachers always know what students need, and where they failed to grasp the essential, and most importantly how to get them out of obstacles. And I bet you must be a good self-teacher. I wish I have ever had you as my teacher!

What is a "self-teacher"?

The advantage of holding "fancy degrees" is usually that you have been exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints and insignt that self-taught people might have. People tend to study what they are interested in. Unfortunately, this can produce self-taught academics with horse blinders on.

Imaging you only got your news from Reddit & Huffington Post, saying you were becoming a self-taught news commentator. You'd probably end up incredibly informed... about liberal viewpoints, perhaps not realizing that a large portion of the country doesn't share them. Getting taught in a formal education system (providing the system works) would expose you to a wider variety of views.

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

#80

Post by TobiasCassell »

butterfi wrote: post #65
TobiasCassell wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey OP, was your technique influenced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow? I'm referring to the relationship between ability level and challenge. Do I see similarities with your clearly effective teaching style and some of the elements Video Game designers have almost unanimously implemented to great success?

I'm not sure "the relationship between ability level and challenge" is what MC means by flow, if that's what you're saying. Q: "What is "the flow experience" and what does it have to do with motivation? A: The flow experience is when a person is completely involved in what he or she is doing, when the concentration is very high, when the person knows moment by moment what the next steps should be, like if you are pla…

(Although it's on the shortlist, I didn't read 'Flow' yet so I may not be able to speak with authority about his work.)

Hey cool, thanks for the link. It's been a long time since I was in school but back then every homework assignment was 100% what we covered that day. So if the "lessons" became unclear many folks just got further and further behind and for many there was no recovering at some point because the teachers never wanted to deviate from their schedule. Btillys 1/3 1/3 1/3 structure really resonates with me because I can imagine I would feel confident and never get in over my head as the complexity of the work escalates. (And if I fell behind I could use his 10 minute improvisational time to get clear) But back to the confidence, Video Games Designers want the player to be challenged but also to feel confident and of course this balance has to remain throughout all levels of the game. Video Game Designers have long used MC's work to help them incorporate this balance. So, yes I do believe the relationship between ability and challenge is part of MC's agenda- there is more, of course. It is my understanding that Video Games are the most common contact most people usually have with MC's work.

I made a connection between the successful feeling of playing video games with the successful learning experiences in Btillys class's and it would be interesting if Btilly is aware of MC's work or if he had ever thought of what he does as MCesque. In closing, I think you and I are saying the same thing here. Thanks for the comment..

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