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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

#121

Post by zappo2938 »

yermierc wrote: post #106
zappo2938 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I'm going to approach this from a professional chef point of view. For the home cook there isn't much you can do. The way to get good at it is following Dave Grohl's advice to get good at playing the guitar or drums, suck at it for a long time.

After a while I forget what the exact temperatures are but I have them written down on an index card in my recipes folder.

In the restaurant, there are some things that need to be memorized. First and foremost is the menu, every new employee needs to memorize it and it is hard to do. I worked 3.5 years in a restaurant that changed the menu every Thursday night. Nobody had a clue what was going on until Wednesday the next week. The second thing is the wine list and which dishes go with each wine. For the bartenders, they need to memorize 100s of different drinks. Both the cooks and the wait staff need to memorize the ingredients as many customers are allergic to nuts, dairy, and shell fish. Who doesn't know that there is lobster in the paella?

A restaurant will have 30 - 40 recipes and memorizing them greatly increases the speed of the cooks, a lot. However, many restaurants consider these trade secrets and like the fashion industry a recipe can't be copyrighted. The restaurants I worked in never really kept the recipes a secret because few people had the skill to implement them correctly. That paella recipe isn't a big deal going back to what I said earlier that the most important thing was sucking at making it for a long time.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#122

Post by tangled_zans »

yermierc wrote: post #102
erispoe wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 A…

That's a very interesting point.

I love the stellar memory that Anki gives me but it's BORING. So so so BORING. It's the primary reason why I don't use it more often. I've been thinking about an alternative for some time, so it's nice to see that someone else is working on it.

I'm not actually too sure of what you're doing that's different though, and the slides you provided have been a bit vague.

Can you elaborate more on what exactly memorang does that keeps people "engaged in vivo"?

And how exactly does it "adapt to [..] study habits, emotional state, learning style, and even the global activity linked to certain concepts"?

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#123

Post by tangled_zans »

polartx wrote: post #113
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…

When you guys have some api documentation I'd love to hear about it. I find myself relying more and more on 'life automation', dashboards and reminders that help to measure, as well as encourage productivity from work, to exercise, to independent study. The ability to tie in personal metrics as well as random samples of card sets would make the difference between binge using an app like memorang or light continuous u…

That sounds interesting, what sort of dashboards do you use? I've been toying with the idea of building something like that.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#124

Post by cblop »

graeme wrote: post #95
cblop wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the KanjiDamage method, which is similar to Heisig but available online: http://www.kanjidamage.com/ . The advantage is that the mnemonics also help you remember the on-yomi for each character. It's not for everyone, though: the author has a filthy sense of humour! Personally, I found that made the mnemonics even more effective.

That looks like a very clever method. With mine I'll have to learn the readings separately. But to be clear....that's what did not stick?

I think my failure was more due to me using Anki, then abandoning it rather than anything else. It's a really good system. I tried Heisig for a bit, but KanjiDamage worked a lot better for me. Perhaps if I'd have combined it with something like the goldlist method it would have worked better for me.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#125

Post by Ixiaus »

nextos wrote: post #25
jhund wrote: post #22

Anki is great. I've used it to learn the 100 most common Clojure expressions. You can get the Anki file by signing up for the newsletter at http://www.lispcast.com/100-most-used-clojure-expressions

There's also a great org-mode extension that implements most SRS algorithms, including Anki's: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html

I second org-drill. Org-mode is my whole personal information manager including information learning w/ org-drill.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#126

Post by tangled_zans »

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…

"The limit of most programs is that it has you learn in a unidirectional manner" What does that even MEAN!?

"I've started using Memorang instead of anki, as it allows me to retain information in the long term as it has multiple ways to approach/learn the same info." Anki allows you to memorise things in the long term too.

"Add the fact that it's free to generate your own content which is perfect for me" ... what? Any SRS method allows you to generate your own content.

No offence, but seeing as you registered just to say all of that, you sound like a shill.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#127

Post by thelearningblvd »

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…

I'm a learning specialist and doctoral student working with students with learning disabilities in grades K-12 and I highly recommend Memorang!

I've used it for a vast range of content including teaching the ABCs, math facts, Wordly Wise vocabulary sets, study sets for 6th grade science tests, and studying for my own graduate courses and teaching exams. The program is flexible and easy to use whether you are in K-12 or in college or studying for post graduate qualifying exams.

Personally, I like using it as a teacher because I can check in on my students' accounts to see if they have been studying and what they know/don't know.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#128

Post by emj »

stdbrouw wrote: post #120
paganel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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).

I think I'd prefer it over office politics, though: it doesn't happen behind your back. (Not that that's a choice anyone has to make.)

They are not exclusive, you get both verbally abused and office politics. Being open is not the same thing as being abusive.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#129

Post by afarrell »

such_a_casual wrote: post #98
JshWright wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your opinion on FOSS?

My concern is systems (software or otherwise) that do not treat the user as an equal or a superior. Systems that do not follow the goldern rule: "treat others how you want to be treated." Being able to read the source code is great, but that doesn't have anything to do with whether the system is going to resepect and serve its users.

> Systems that do not follow the goldern rule: "treat others how you want to be treated"

This is a good first-approximation to an ethical system, but ultimately fails in many areas of the real world. I would prefer that the systems that provide me with food do so without demanding that I pay them money, but that is in direct conflict with the need to pay people to do the work to create and maintain that system.

I would prefer that there exists a system where I can store flashcards for studying various things and that that system not charge me money. That is in conflict with the need to pay people to create and maintain that system. One way to resolve that conflict is to only require payment for some features of the system.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#130

Post by afarrell »

such_a_casual wrote: post #75
gjcourt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We allow for private content, but that's a premium feature since it's against the ethos of our platform.

Privacy is against the ethos of your platform? I think that's about all that needs to be said.

How do you feel about github charging money for private code hosting but not charging for hosting open-source code?
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