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Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

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Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#101

Post by yermierc »

tunesmith wrote: post #94
gjcourt wrote: post #55

A friend and I decided to build an Anki replacement a few years ago, it's now located at https://www.memorangapp.com and has a loyal following of 10s of thousands of users. Anki is a great tool and has a wide variety of content on Ankiweb, however the ecosystem doesn't allow for any collaboration or the ability to keep content up to date (aside from manually editing decks, but where for example can you suggest a corr…

One of the things I realized after using Anki for a while is that school education isn't really even designed for retention - it seems built for cramming and forgetting. I'm just concluding that off of basic scale. After using Anki for a couple of coursera courses and being overwhelmed with cards for months until it calmed down, I realized there was no way I would have been able to keep up with retaining all learned…

What you're describing is exactly in line with what I've experienced anecdotally and what we've seen in our studies and retrospective analysis of tens of millions of questions answered.

I think the problem with Anki can be distilled down to root assumptions it makes about how people should ideally learn and how to model what is forgotten over time. In studying for a course there are basically three strategies: (1) cram at the end (2) study reasonably throughout the whole course (3) try to keep re-learning the course indefinitely.

We've thought long and hard about how we can cater to these different styles and think we've done a good job with a hybrid of #1 and 2. What would make more sense is something coming early next year as an option feature, which is inputting the date of the final exam of your course and then periodically adding in flashcards to a growing playlist that optimizes retention for the day of your exam. After you finish, you don't necessarily have to continue, but you could set a longer-retention date. An example of this would be that you have weekly quizzes and a final exam, and the algorithm could adjust the date for each quiz while balancing the overall arc towards the final.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#102

Post by yermierc »

erispoe wrote: post #99
yermierc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A friend" reporting in... While many people may love Anki, you can count me out. I used it extensively during my first 2 years of medical school along with trying physical cards, Quizlet, and even my own custom batch files and macros. I think that it works for a very particular use case, and you need to fully commit to it to get the intended benefits. My personal belief is that an "adaptive" learning system doesn't…

> an "adaptive" learning system doesn't just adapt to the spacing effect, but to your study habits, emotional state, learning style, and even the global activity linked to certain concepts That's interesting, how do you assess the marginal benefit of extra adaptation beyond the spacing effect? My understanding is that the spacing big is pretty big to begin with, compared to a blunt read and re-read approach. How bett…

I can't answer with an exact number until we can do sufficient prospective studies, but I can share some data: We have done some studies where two students were already using Anki and were failing or in the danger zone of failing. After being introduced to Memorang for 6-8 weeks, they all increased their scores by a national standard deviation and had a 100% passing rate.

What does this mean? The students said that Anki didn't motivate them, and that study fatigue (Not the spacing effect) was the key differentiator. As a medical student I am very familiar with this, and so one of our main goals with Memorang is to keep people engaged in vivo, not just have an optimal algorithm should you religiously follow it to a T.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#103

Post by gjcourt »

ERGuy wrote: post #61
gjcourt wrote: post #55

A friend and I decided to build an Anki replacement a few years ago, it's now located at https://www.memorangapp.com and has a loyal following of 10s of thousands of users. Anki is a great tool and has a wide variety of content on Ankiweb, however the ecosystem doesn't allow for any collaboration or the ability to keep content up to date (aside from manually editing decks, but where for example can you suggest a corr…

Totally agree, spaced repetion has its role but has huge limitations. The limit of most programs is that it has you learn in a unidirectional manner, so very few memory pathways are formed and they are easily lost/degraded with time. As an post states, the flashcards didn't stay, but the characters you learned while in Japan stuck. I submit that part of that is that this material was presented to you in several ways…

Awesome! Love to hear positive feedback :-)

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#105

Post by shobhitverma »

gjcourt wrote: post #55

A friend and I decided to build an Anki replacement a few years ago, it's now located at https://www.memorangapp.com and has a loyal following of 10s of thousands of users. Anki is a great tool and has a wide variety of content on Ankiweb, however the ecosystem doesn't allow for any collaboration or the ability to keep content up to date (aside from manually editing decks, but where for example can you suggest a corr…

What do you guys think of Knewton (The gorilla in adaptive learning)? They claim to be super adaptive but it is hard to tell. I used their product and was not super impressed with the adaptivity.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#106

Post by yermierc »

zappo2938 wrote: post #97
yermierc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A friend" reporting in... While many people may love Anki, you can count me out. I used it extensively during my first 2 years of medical school along with trying physical cards, Quizlet, and even my own custom batch files and macros. I think that it works for a very particular use case, and you need to fully commit to it to get the intended benefits. My personal belief is that an "adaptive" learning system doesn't…

After a career of being a chef with employees, I decided to return to school to learn how to write. There is one thing that struck me with the professors in college. While in the kitchen, if a cook made a mistake, the failure and responsibility fell on me whether I was a sous-chef or executive chef. Earlier in my career I was a chef de partie in a two Michelin star restaurant with a team of 4 cooks under me. If a coo…

This message really resonated with me. Thank you very much for sharing. One thing that we've really thought about is how to learn in the real world for subjects outside of school. I know this is a silly example, but check out this set: http://www.memorangapp.com/flashcards/20746/How+to+cook+the+...

We're working on a version of our platform where you could define need-to-know facts for your employees and then give them an engaging, adaptive way to learn. These data would be fed back to you and you could determine how to help your employees, or who is falling behind. Maybe even aspects of your "curriculum" for employee training that are insufficient.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#107

Post by steve19 »

zappo2938 wrote: post #97
yermierc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A friend" reporting in... While many people may love Anki, you can count me out. I used it extensively during my first 2 years of medical school along with trying physical cards, Quizlet, and even my own custom batch files and macros. I think that it works for a very particular use case, and you need to fully commit to it to get the intended benefits. My personal belief is that an "adaptive" learning system doesn't…

After a career of being a chef with employees, I decided to return to school to learn how to write. There is one thing that struck me with the professors in college. While in the kitchen, if a cook made a mistake, the failure and responsibility fell on me whether I was a sous-chef or executive chef. Earlier in my career I was a chef de partie in a two Michelin star restaurant with a team of 4 cooks under me. If a coo…

There is nothing clever or special about how you or other chefs treat and abuse your employees.

You seem to have successfully, in your mind, justified verbal abuse ("it's OK if they can handle it and I gave them a hug last week").... let's call that "enlightened bullying" verses straight up bullying.

The ability to put up with bullies in the workplace do not make a better chef (I would prefer to see a study if you disagree, not just hear about engrained culture). It selects for psychopaths, not good cooks. It's not the military, it's a kitchen.

I train people everyday. Failure for them to learn is my failure. But I never insult or belittle them in private or public. That achieves nothing.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#108

Post by stdbrouw »

tunesmith wrote: post #94
gjcourt wrote: post #55

A friend and I decided to build an Anki replacement a few years ago, it's now located at https://www.memorangapp.com and has a loyal following of 10s of thousands of users. Anki is a great tool and has a wide variety of content on Ankiweb, however the ecosystem doesn't allow for any collaboration or the ability to keep content up to date (aside from manually editing decks, but where for example can you suggest a corr…

One of the things I realized after using Anki for a while is that school education isn't really even designed for retention - it seems built for cramming and forgetting. I'm just concluding that off of basic scale. After using Anki for a couple of coursera courses and being overwhelmed with cards for months until it calmed down, I realized there was no way I would have been able to keep up with retaining all learned…

It probably depends on what you study, but I feel most professors realize this. It's why open book exams and take home exams exist, and why you're graded not just on exams but also on assignments.

Nothing wrong with just using Anki for things that you, personally, feel you'd like to remember.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#109

Post by yermierc »

shobhitverma wrote: post #105
gjcourt wrote: post #55

A friend and I decided to build an Anki replacement a few years ago, it's now located at https://www.memorangapp.com and has a loyal following of 10s of thousands of users. Anki is a great tool and has a wide variety of content on Ankiweb, however the ecosystem doesn't allow for any collaboration or the ability to keep content up to date (aside from manually editing decks, but where for example can you suggest a corr…

What do you guys think of Knewton (The gorilla in adaptive learning)? They claim to be super adaptive but it is hard to tell. I used their product and was not super impressed with the adaptivity.

Don't have strong opinions one way or the other on Knewton. That being said, I generally feel that enterprise software where you sell to institutions and publishers is fundamentally disconnected from software that's targeted at the users directly.

I would greatly prefer to hear students raving about a learning product rather than their instructors. In your case you seem to be a bit underwhelmed by what they offer.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#110

Post by paganel »

zappo2938 wrote: post #97
yermierc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A friend" reporting in... While many people may love Anki, you can count me out. I used it extensively during my first 2 years of medical school along with trying physical cards, Quizlet, and even my own custom batch files and macros. I think that it works for a very particular use case, and you need to fully commit to it to get the intended benefits. My personal belief is that an "adaptive" learning system doesn't…

After a career of being a chef with employees, I decided to return to school to learn how to write. There is one thing that struck me with the professors in college. While in the kitchen, if a cook made a mistake, the failure and responsibility fell on me whether I was a sous-chef or executive chef. Earlier in my career I was a chef de partie in a two Michelin star restaurant with a team of 4 cooks under me. If a coo…

> "where the fuck do you think you work, McDonald's?"

I'm stating the obvious here, but verbal abuse is not ok in a professional setting, never ever. There's nothing to justify it, not even "success" (a better cooked meal, more revenues coming in for the company etc).

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