Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall • Hacker News Board

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#171

Post by rsanek » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 11:15 AM UTC

4BA9940C wrote: post #101

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I agree. Anki has a failure mode for me that I eventually accumulate > 5000 flash cards and a review session can take an hour or more. Knowing what to review is really difficult. I'll give Supermemo a shot, I've always heard of it as the gold standard but never tried it.

I'm familiar with that problem, and overcame it by really working at making good cards. Today, I have 6000 cards in my collection, and daily reviews take 15-20 minutes; usually 100-120 cards. (I have been using Anki for a lost time. My collection is almost 10 years old.) Granted, writing good cards is easy to say and really hard to do. Some specific pointers: - cards should take less than 10 seconds to answer - most…

In my experience, you really only start to see these problems at the tens of thousands of flashcards level. I have ~70,000 mature flashcards and also have the growing backlog problem, even if I don't add new cards for weeks. My collection is 8 years old.

I agree that making good flashcards helps alot. Another big thing is to make sure the knowledge graph is connected, eg there are no 'orphaned' individual cards / groups of cards. Those tend to suffer seriously from decay for me.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#172

Post by David_R » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #63

dls2016 wrote: post #17

I was anti-memorization until I went back to graduate school for mathematics. I had forgotten (or never learned) a lot of things needed to pass qualifying exams. At some point I ran across the spaced repetition idea (maybe from the Wired SuperMemo article [0]) and I gave it a try. I ended up using it to memorize large portions of baby Rudin and Munkres' Topology, as well as some algebra and a bunch of qualifying exam…

I'd be really interested to see some research into integrating spaced repetition into our actual education system. Almost everything I see about it is adults learning, I wonder how much we could speed up primary school education considering so much of the "base" stuff needed to advance is rote memorization anyway seems like countries should be investing money in this, potentially trillions in unlocked economic potent…

>see some research...spaced repetition into our actual education system.< I have followed the research in this area closely for several years. Most of the (excellent) foundational research was done by university psychology professors who used college students as subjects; it's much harder for them to use primary school students, hence far less research with young learners. Implementing these techniques in elementary schools is more challenging then many would guess. Two good books: "Make it Stick" Brown, Roediger, McDaniel; "Powerful Teaching" Agarwal & Bain. PM me if you'd like more info. The second book describes research with middle school students. Pooja Agarwal also hosts the informative site www.retrievalpractice.org which informs K-12 teachers and has lots of free downloads. I am involved in a startup that is beginning (pilot teachers in September) to implement spaced repetition for elementary school math.

Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall

#173

Post by lemming » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 12:34 AM UTC

David_R wrote: post #172

ren_engineer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be really interested to see some research into integrating spaced repetition into our actual education system. Almost everything I see about it is adults learning, I wonder how much we could speed up primary school education considering so much of the "base" stuff needed to advance is rote memorization anyway seems like countries should be investing money in this, potentially trillions in unlocked economic potent…

>see some research...spaced repetition into our actual education system.< I have followed the research in this area closely for several years. Most of the (excellent) foundational research was done by university psychology professors who used college students as subjects; it's much harder for them to use primary school students, hence far less research with young learners. Implementing these techniques in elementary…

I'm interested in this, but you don't have any contact info in your profile. HN itself doesn't have a messaging feature, so you have to leave an email address or something there. If you'd rather just message me my address is in my profile.