Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

#21

Post by Jtsummers »

dgs_sgd wrote: post #19
reactspa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anki is great... however: ... having used it for the last 4 years to try to memorize vocabulary in certain languages (Spanish & French, recently started Chinese), I think it's a base layer ... (much like how Bitcoiners like to talk about BTC's Blockchain). Reasons: 1. I've tired of it. I need a layer that makes me excited to use it. 2. I've found it far-far less useful for learning other things than rote vocabulary m…

I've used Anki every day for almost a year now for Spanish vocabulary. My deck has over 4000 cards. Most are one-to-one translations of nouns and verbs, but some are phrases and Spanish idioms. To your first point, it has basically become a habit for me. The key is to really commit to it for the first several weeks and establish the habit, then you won't feel tired of it as reviewing your cards daily becomes somethin…

> I believe Anki memorization + regular conversational practice is second only to full immersion as the best learning strategy.

I'd extend this:

  Memory + Synthesis = Useful learning strategy
Blindly learning facts with no intent to synthesize them into something else will help you win at trivia contests. Learning to integrate those facts into something else (like conversation, with languages) is how you effectively learn. Both aspects are needed in order to become effective at whatever subject you're studying.

That said, with Anki or any other tool these rules are incredibly handy:

https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20ru...

Re: To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

#22

Post by missblit »

reactspa wrote: post #10
djoldman wrote: post #5

Free app based on the same idea: https://apps.ankiweb.net/ https://github.com/ankitects/anki-manual/

Anki is great... however: ... having used it for the last 4 years to try to memorize vocabulary in certain languages (Spanish & French, recently started Chinese), I think it's a base layer ... (much like how Bitcoiners like to talk about BTC's Blockchain). Reasons: 1. I've tired of it. I need a layer that makes me excited to use it. 2. I've found it far-far less useful for learning other things than rote vocabulary m…

Totally agree with this.

When learning Japanese grinding vocab was extremely boring but did a fantastic job of bridging the gap between textbook literature and actually being able to read simpler (middle school level) native literature / comics / news stories.

And I didn't even need that many words to bridge that gap. Maybe like 1000 or so over what I'd already picked up from textbooks.

Now? There's no way in heck I'm going back to grinding vocab and instead slowly pick up new words by reading tons and tons of books.

I still need to rote memorize a bunch of kanji since picking them up naturally is pretty brutal, but like with vocabulary I'll only do it to the point where I can stumble through YA-level books without looking something up every other sentence.

Re: To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

#23

Post by Asraelite »

djoldman wrote: post #5

Free app based on the same idea: https://apps.ankiweb.net/ https://github.com/ankitects/anki-manual/

The consensus within the Anki community seems to be that yes, the SuperMemo scheduling algorithm (SM-17) is a bit better than Anki's (SM-2 variant), but not by enough to matter, so you shouldn't worry about it.

But when you look into tests people have done to see how much better it is exactly, it's around 30% more efficient.

I still use Anki and am grateful for its existence, but this is a huge difference in efficiency. I wish there was a better open source scheduling algorithm available.

Re: To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

#25

Post by MarkLowenstein »

Since the early 90s I've used a piano-practice scheme that provides spaced repetition. It greatly reduces the time needed to either (1) learn or (2) memorize pieces. I always feel compelled to cite this poem:

You can get a great deal from rehearsal

If it just has the proper dispersal

You would just be an ass

To do it en masse

Your remembering would turn out much worsal.

Re: To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

#26

Post by nzeribe »

djoldman wrote: post #5

Free app based on the same idea: https://apps.ankiweb.net/ https://github.com/ankitects/anki-manual/

Anki is just a slice of Piotr Wozniak's ideas, and the algorithm it uses isn't as good as that implemented in his own software, SuperMemo. And besides: it doesn't do incremental reading, which is lights-out amazing: https://super-memo.com/supermemo18.html

Re: To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

#29

Post by SamBam »

Asraelite wrote: post #23
djoldman wrote: post #5

Free app based on the same idea: https://apps.ankiweb.net/ https://github.com/ankitects/anki-manual/

The consensus within the Anki community seems to be that yes, the SuperMemo scheduling algorithm (SM-17) is a bit better than Anki's (SM-2 variant), but not by enough to matter, so you shouldn't worry about it. But when you look into tests people have done to see how much better it is exactly, it's around 30% more efficient. I still use Anki and am grateful for its existence, but this is a huge difference in efficien…

How come Anki cant update it itself? Is SM-17 just a different set of exponential-decay functions from SM-2? Is that even copyrightable?

Also, if Anki is open-source, I'm surprised that there is no unofficial port that uses SM-17. But maybe I'm just ignorant of how much work that would involve.

Re: To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

#30

Post by wsinks »

david-gpu wrote: post #14
reactspa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anki is great... however: ... having used it for the last 4 years to try to memorize vocabulary in certain languages (Spanish & French, recently started Chinese), I think it's a base layer ... (much like how Bitcoiners like to talk about BTC's Blockchain). Reasons: 1. I've tired of it. I need a layer that makes me excited to use it. 2. I've found it far-far less useful for learning other things than rote vocabulary m…

In my opinion people often make the mistake of using Anki to memorize one-to-one translations of foreign words. It is more effective to use it to learn the mapping of whole sentences. For every word you want to learn, add a few idiomatic and representative sentences in Anki. You can do the same for every new grammatical concept you want to learn. And don't forget to use Anki's text-to-speech tools to practice listeni…

Any chance you've studied either Spanish or Russian and have decks to share? I've never fully gotten started with Anki, but would love to get back into it to use it to expand my vocab with full sentences.

I'll also be checking online now that you've spurred my curiosity, just curious if you have ones that you like too.

Post reply on HN