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Augmenting long-term memory (2018)

augmentingcognition.com

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Re: Augmenting long-term memory (2018)

#21

Post by skottenborg »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #17
skottenborg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you care to expand on how Anki helped you with Leetcode problems? Did you just think of a solution in your head and then compared it with the back of the card?

I put an href on the front side of the card to the problem, and most of the time actually clicked through and redid the problem from scratch (making sure to avert my eyes while I deleted LC's copy of my last attempt). If I felt particularly lazy or confident, I would just mentally sketch out the solution. Worth noting I also became much more adept at things like list comprehensions and using Counters and DefaultDicts…

Interesting. I have seen public decks of Leetcode questions that had a summary of the solution for each problem, but I've never heard of this take.

I'm tempted to try it for my self. Did you only include problems that you solved previously?

Re: Augmenting long-term memory (2018)

#22

Post by _kwef »

steve1977 wrote: post #18
_kwef wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 rules for formulating knowledge [1] are also very useful. They were written by the creator of SuperMemo, which to my knowledge developed a lot of the spaced repetition algorithms. For example Anki, the software talked about in the article, uses the SM-2 algorithm by default which was developed by SuperMemo. [1]: https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...

While SuperMemo is at SM-18 in meantime and also much ahead of Anki in other features like incremental reading (which in my experience is its real super power, not the spaced repetition as such). Although there might be plugins for Anki that offer something similar.

Iirc there used to be an Anki plugin that implemented incremental reading, but I think that one of the more recent Anki updates broke it.

Re: Augmenting long-term memory (2018)

#23

Post by steve1977 »

_kwef wrote: post #22
steve1977 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While SuperMemo is at SM-18 in meantime and also much ahead of Anki in other features like incremental reading (which in my experience is its real super power, not the spaced repetition as such). Although there might be plugins for Anki that offer something similar.

Iirc there used to be an Anki plugin that implemented incremental reading, but I think that one of the more recent Anki updates broke it.

That's one of my major gripes with Anki, it's just a bit too brittle for my taste. SuperMemo is not without its quirks (I mean, it's a quirky niche software to begin with), but all in all, I never had any major problem with it and I've been using it for more than a decade now.

Re: Augmenting long-term memory (2018)

#24

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

skottenborg wrote: post #21
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put an href on the front side of the card to the problem, and most of the time actually clicked through and redid the problem from scratch (making sure to avert my eyes while I deleted LC's copy of my last attempt). If I felt particularly lazy or confident, I would just mentally sketch out the solution. Worth noting I also became much more adept at things like list comprehensions and using Counters and DefaultDicts…

Interesting. I have seen public decks of Leetcode questions that had a summary of the solution for each problem, but I've never heard of this take. I'm tempted to try it for my self. Did you only include problems that you solved previously?

No. In fact, I had never solved a Leetcode problem before. Every time a card came up that I had never attempted before, I simply flipped it over and typed in whatever answer was on the other side - but only the first time. Each other time I would try to remember as much of the solution as I could.

Eventually I got good enough that I started naturally thinking up solutions to entirely new problems without having to check the answer first, which is what one would expect if they were building new crystallized intelligence by practicing earlier problems.

Re: Augmenting long-term memory (2018)

#25

Post by subtra3t »

steve1977 wrote: post #23
_kwef wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iirc there used to be an Anki plugin that implemented incremental reading, but I think that one of the more recent Anki updates broke it.

That's one of my major gripes with Anki, it's just a bit too brittle for my taste. SuperMemo is not without its quirks (I mean, it's a quirky niche software to begin with), but all in all, I never had any major problem with it and I've been using it for more than a decade now.

I think for most people who want to get started with SRS, Anki is just fine. A lot of people like to hate its UI but I personally find it perfectly fine (and even good before the recent update where they forced drop shadows on random UI elements). It being available on every major platform is also a major plus point for when one needs to review cards with no access to their workstation.

That being said, the $40 is probably what holds most people back from using SuperMemo. If I had $40 to spend on SRS without feeling guilty I'd 100% use SM over Anki.

Re: Augmenting long-term memory (2018)

#26

Post by gbacon »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #11

Anki is great. I am gigging asking 33,000 cards among all of my decks right now, with about 6000 in active rotation. I built what one person called the highest quality Finnish flashcard deck on the Internet, and it was the project that finally convinced me that software was my calling. Some very scattershot hacker's notes. - The underlying Anki database is "just" an SQLite database. You can copy it, run Datasette on…

Thanks, these are great! Do you take notes directly into Anki cards or process them later?

Re: Augmenting long-term memory (2018)

#27

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

gbacon wrote: post #26
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #11

Anki is great. I am gigging asking 33,000 cards among all of my decks right now, with about 6000 in active rotation. I built what one person called the highest quality Finnish flashcard deck on the Internet, and it was the project that finally convinced me that software was my calling. Some very scattershot hacker's notes. - The underlying Anki database is "just" an SQLite database. You can copy it, run Datasette on…

Thanks, these are great! Do you take notes directly into Anki cards or process them later?

Directly into Anki. I try not to use cloze deletions either - straight Q & As whenever possible.
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