Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards • Hacker News Board

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#141

Post by zora_goron » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

I used Anki quite a bit in med school, where it’s extremely popular. Admittedly, it took me a couple years to fully buy in to it as a tool for cramming hundreds of facts, especially coming from an academic background (computer science) where memorizing facts at a high rate was not a huge emphasis at all.

After using it for a while though, I began to value how the quick recall encouraged by the system actually seemed to /enhance/ my deeper understanding of concepts, rather than replace it (I wrote a short post about this a couple years ago [0]).

[0] https://samrawal.substack.com/p/on-the-relationship-between-...

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#142

Post by colordrops » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

I've put cards into Anki on several occasions and somehow when I come back after a few months they've disappeared in one way or another. Fool me once.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#143

Post by tonyjstark » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

nmfisher wrote: post #68

tonyjstark wrote: post #57

A lot of people seem to like shared card decks but creating your own cards is part of the learning process, you spent time with the material you want to learn, which is the main thing that helps you learning. shameless self-plug: On macos and iOS we found Anki a bit out of place so we build a competitor explicitly for language learning ( https://wokabulary.com/ ).

Were conservative pundits outraged that you were pushing wokabulary?

Haha, at least it hurts our Google score. When we came up with the name it was just an innocent wordplay.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#144

Post by watwut » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

I tried to use Anki a while ago, but stopped. I felt like Anki is trying to control my life while I could not control it. It was too easy to make strategic mistake that would affect your workload in an uncontrollable way a week or month later.

For example, if you have time or are bored today and do some extra cards, your workload month later goes up. Except that month later you might be tired and not have time. And if you skip a day or dont do everything, the next day your workload goes up by twice ... and a week later too and a month later too for the same batch of cards.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#145

Post by Lapha » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:48 PM UTC

alabhyajindal wrote: post #113

Arisaka1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a moment. "tar commandline flags"? When I was still learning how to program, the general advice was to avoid memorizing things you can easily look up, like language syntax, framework functionality or commandline flags, and just let it happen. In fact, I recently caught myself skimming Nest.js docs to make cards to learn how to use Nest.js BEFORE I even start working on my project, and almost felt like I'm procra…

He should have used Vim instead of memorizing it's keybindings. That makes no sense at all.

Well, he absolutely should have been using Vim, he instead spent the week learning vi.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#146

Post by watwut » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

xedrac wrote: post #114

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Let me think about your point. The problem seems not dependent on the specifics of my efforts for me - it seems inherent to Anki for language-learning. That the flash cards have lots of bells and whistles seems unrelated to my giving up because 90 minutes a day wasn't enough to keep things under control. I haven't had any time that my circumstances have change so much that my accessorising ended up a negative. (…

90 minutes is a very big ask if you want to be consistent. Maybe you're simply trying to bite off more than you can chew? I think consistency is king, so whatever you have to do to stay consistent will pay dividends, even if that means shaving your working set down to just 10 minutes a day.

The thing with Anki is that you cant control how much workload you have per day. Anki algorithm decides that. Say, you start by doing it little bit every day and you are fine for first three weeks. But then, Anki starts assigning you more and more repetition and that is it.

If you do less one day, Anki gives you those cards the next day on top of the normal workload of that day. There is no way out.

Worst, the less you retain, the more mistakes you make, the more your workload goes up. Anki algorithm never do the "lower workload because this person does not retain" decision. Instead, it will just give you more and more work in such case.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#147

Post by SamPatt » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:51 PM UTC

romeros wrote: post #129

Version467 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, but I suspect that's due to learning being tedious.

Memorization isn't the same as learning. Using a preexisting deck is memorizing someone else's learning.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#148

Post by SamPatt » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:56 PM UTC

Version467 wrote: post #127

tussa wrote: 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…

Well said, this is the key part for me:

>It makes knowledge gaps more visible

It's the same principle behind teaching others. It's easy to think you understand something until you are forced to communicate it beyond the surface level.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#149

Post by xbar » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:57 PM UTC

pavelboyko wrote: post #36

Spaced repetition, especially when using tools like Anki, is effective for memorizing facts. However, memorization represents the most basic level of learning objectives, see e.g. [1] and [2]. Are there any recommended tools for practicing more advanced levels of knowledge, such as relational analysis, synthesis, and critical evaluation? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy [2] https://en.m.wikipedi…

I think you are minimizing something that is very important.

Understanding deeply and completely any topic is much easier when you understand deeply and completely the fundamental components and concepts--which starts with memorization.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#150

Post by kylegalbraith » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

Been using Anki for years for more advanced language learning. I usually keep notes of words or phrases that come up during my day to day living in France that are new to me (or used a way I’m less familiar with). I research their construction/uses and throw them in an ongoing study deck I review every morning.

It’s really helped me gain a deeper understanding of the language and feel more confident in conversations.