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Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

apps.ankiweb.net

121–130 of 438 posts

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#121
post #18

My boy is 11 now. We've used Anki with him every day since he was about 5. Examples of things he's memorized, for fun: * every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map * spelling * many body parts, names of bones and organs, from illustration * chemical elements, by symbol (Na, Fe, Zn, etc) * unix filesystem commands * numeracy references (km from here to Japan, earth to sun, meters from home to school) * re…

I’m curious, how did you manage to get a child into Anki and make them self sufficient on it? Kudos to you

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Hypothetical example, but let's say I use some obscure tar command twice a month. That's too far apart for me to remember it, but often enough that it would annoy me to look it up every time. Chuck it into anki and I have a short time where I repeat it often enough so that it sticks and after that the time between repetitions quickly becomes far longer than the 14 day interval where I actually use th…

I think that's the original claim: That you're memorizing something that you use 12-20 times per year. Why not turn that into a script, or make it a memorable alias?

Because I perceive the cost of memorizing it to be almost zero.

There's of course a need for nuance here. I do write scripts to automate stuff and I do have aliases configured for certain commands, directories, etc. I don't try to remember all the things, just so that I never have to look something up again.

If I wasn't a heavy anki user already, then I certainly wouldn't set it up just to remember some commandline stuff. But that's not the situation I'm in. I use it for lots of things already and I have an established habit to review the cards every day. Adding a card to remember specific flags has incredibly low overhead for me.

A different, but similar example is using Anki for learning library/framework syntax. I made heavy use of it when I first learned Pytorch. There are so many different commands to wrangle your data into the shape you need it to be. I frequently mixed them up and got frustrated because it doesn't necessarily result in runtime errors and then it's hard to debug (because I didn't know what I was doing). So everyday I chucked a couple of the new commands I encountered into Anki and by the end of the week I was comfortable doing all kinds transformations. Would I have learned to do that without Anki? Probably. Did it give me an additional opportunity to consolidate that knowledge for very little cost? Also yes.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#124

Can anyone comment on why most people want software like Anki to be a native application? Most people who implemented their own SRS have done so in the form of a mobile app. Why? I would think that having a web app would be much easier from a single developer point of view: maintain one application that can be accessed from any device. I am biased because I'm a web developer but I'd like to be corrected.

I want a native app for Anki (and similar things) because I don't always have an internet connection. It's pretty much as simple as that. Anki does have a web version which I have used, though.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#125
post #28

Weird, I was actually thinking of a related AskHN, that comments here are obviously now the place for. Is there anything similar people use for sort of general 'knowledge base' type things - like people use one big text file, or Obsidian, or Logseq, or Notion, or whatever - but with some kind of Anki-like reminder/retrieval rather than just deliberate searching to look something up? Or do people successfully use Anki…

RemNote seems like a close match to what you're describing: https://www.remnote.com

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#126
post #18

My boy is 11 now. We've used Anki with him every day since he was about 5. Examples of things he's memorized, for fun: * every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map * spelling * many body parts, names of bones and organs, from illustration * chemical elements, by symbol (Na, Fe, Zn, etc) * unix filesystem commands * numeracy references (km from here to Japan, earth to sun, meters from home to school) * re…

Is he on the autism spectrum?

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#127
post #120
post #70

One tip for working with Anki: you will likely learn better - and review cards more regularly - if you write the cards yourself instead of using a preexisting deck. Going through a course / textbook -> taking notes on paper -> adding key concepts as Anki flashcards -> reviewing them daily: extremely effective Preexisting decks can work - I used one to successfully study for my Amateur Radio License - but that assumes…

> if you write the cards yourself I'd go so far to say it's almost an requirement. Unless you have a high quality deck made specifically for the book/course/material you have. Sadly most of the publicly available Anki are IMHO not of that quality.

Even if they were, writing cards yourself forces you to engage with the material in a way that's highly conducive to learning it. It makes knowledge gaps more visible and forces you to understand it if you want to have any chance breaking the material down into pieces that make good cards.

The positive effects of SRS rely just as much on the repetition as they do on the creation of the cards. I know that not everyone agrees with this, it's certainly been true for me.

Premade decks might work for language learning, but even then I'd be wary.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#128
post #18

My boy is 11 now. We've used Anki with him every day since he was about 5. Examples of things he's memorized, for fun: * every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map * spelling * many body parts, names of bones and organs, from illustration * chemical elements, by symbol (Na, Fe, Zn, etc) * unix filesystem commands * numeracy references (km from here to Japan, earth to sun, meters from home to school) * re…

Do you have a similar habit? How does one get started making Anki a habit? I've used Anki for studying before exams, but I haven't been able to integrate it into my life.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#129
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you write the cards yourself I'd go so far to say it's almost an requirement. Unless you have a high quality deck made specifically for the book/course/material you have. Sadly most of the publicly available Anki are IMHO not of that quality.

Even if they were, writing cards yourself forces you to engage with the material in a way that's highly conducive to learning it. It makes knowledge gaps more visible and forces you to understand it if you want to have any chance breaking the material down into pieces that make good cards. The positive effects of SRS rely just as much on the repetition as they do on the creation of the cards. I know that not everyone…

writing your own cards is very tedious.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#130
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you write the cards yourself I'd go so far to say it's almost an requirement. Unless you have a high quality deck made specifically for the book/course/material you have. Sadly most of the publicly available Anki are IMHO not of that quality.

Even if they were, writing cards yourself forces you to engage with the material in a way that's highly conducive to learning it. It makes knowledge gaps more visible and forces you to understand it if you want to have any chance breaking the material down into pieces that make good cards. The positive effects of SRS rely just as much on the repetition as they do on the creation of the cards. I know that not everyone…

I've been studying Chinese with a premade deck for several years and it's working very well.

Of course, ideally one would want to create cards, but I only can devote around 30 minutes per day. Under that restriction, creating cards is not really an option.

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