Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
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Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#2These mnemonics techniques have been used since the ancient Greeks and Romans. But does it train your brain in the same way if the images and storylines are being given to you with pre-packaged GIFS?
Brining gaming and crowd-sourcing into memory training is interesting, since this kind of learning has traditionally been a very isolated practice.
Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#3I used to use memrise, and enjoyed it, especially the gamification and the ability to put your own mnemonics in as well as see what images others used. But when they changed to a garden metaphor I lost track of what their algorithm was doing and went back to more traditional flashcardexchange.com mostly. I'll take another look though.
Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#4I used to use memrise, and enjoyed it, especially the gamification and the ability to put your own mnemonics in as well as see what images others used. But when they changed to a garden metaphor I lost track of what their algorithm was doing and went back to more traditional flashcardexchange.com mostly. I'll take another look though.
When did they switch to a new style?
Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#5Heh I thought it's about computer memory.
Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#6These mnemonics techniques have been used since the ancient Greeks and Romans. But does it train your brain in the same way if the images and storylines are being given to you with pre-packaged GIFS? Brining gaming and crowd-sourcing into memory training is interesting, since this kind of learning has traditionally been a very isolated practice.
This is a great question.
In our experience, we've found that creating your own mnemonic is usually the best way to really deeply encode a new memory.
But a great mem from someone else works almost as well. And it's a lot easier to breeze along, giggling at other people's imagery, occasionally coming up with something new of your own.
Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#7I used to use memrise, and enjoyed it, especially the gamification and the ability to put your own mnemonics in as well as see what images others used. But when they changed to a garden metaphor I lost track of what their algorithm was doing and went back to more traditional flashcardexchange.com mostly. I'll take another look though.
When did they switch to a new style?
We added the garden narrative in Spring 2011. The goal was to wrap our internal model of the state of your memories in a visual metaphor to make it clearer and more vivid for you as a learner.
We've improved the underlying algorithms a lot since then. Do let us know if you still find the garden confusing.
Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#8These guys are badasses and the product works great. Learned ~100 Mandarin characters with very little effort and the product gets iterated on very quickly (their support team really listens to customer feedback). Congrats on the funding!
Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#9I really enjoyed memrise when I used it but I wish it had a couple more features for languages, like sentence building with the words youve learned. Also, I would've used it everyday if there was a mobile app. Its been awhile since i have played with it though. Overall, a great tool and I've recommended it to fair number of people :)
Re: Memory grand master Ed Cooke gets $1M to teach his tricks at new startup
#10I really enjoyed memrise when I used it but I wish it had a couple more features for languages, like sentence building with the words youve learned. Also, I would've used it everyday if there was a mobile app. Its been awhile since i have played with it though. Overall, a great tool and I've recommended it to fair number of people :)
Thanks for the positivity. We have an iPhone app coming out in the next 10 days. Definitely let us know what you think of it if you try it.
Sentence building is definitely on our radar, but it's a rich and thorny domain, and we want to take our time coming up with something good.
P.S. Android is going to take a little longer.