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

Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

apps.ankiweb.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 438 posts

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#201

Post by blago »

itsrajju wrote: post #25
sivers wrote: 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…

Your boy is precious! He's on his way to becoming a highly intelligent adult. I've seen a lot of people going like... why remember stuff when you can easily google it? But it doesn't work that way. The more facts reside in your brain, the more avenues it has to connect them together and generate insights (after all, that thing is the OG "neural network"). I highly admire your parenting in this aspect, and I hope to d…

I think it's even more precious that the boy has learned how to learn and has developed a taste for achievement based on a dopamine loop that doesn't employ sugar or special effects in 4K.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#202

Post by studley »

I've found Anki useful for focusing piano practice. Each piece of music I have worked on over the years has a few tricky bars in it. Before Anki, I was really bad at remembering which bars I was bad at in each piece, and would tend to practice the bars I already know how to play, which is pleasant to do.

Today, I have one deck, which has a flashcard for each set of tricky bars from all the pieces I've worked on. Now when I sit down to practice the piano, I just load up that deck, and those bars are what I practice, and I grade myself on each flashcard to indicate how quickly I need to re-practise those particular tricky bars.

I've done this 5+ year now, and I'm impressed at how good the default algorithm seems to be at effectively ordering my piano practice sessions.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#203

Post by BeetleB »

atahanacar wrote: post #191
SamPatt wrote: 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 instead of using a preexisting deck I disagree with this. Anki's power comes from spaced repetition. Spending your time creating cards instead of actually reviewing the material is very inefficient. If high quality decks exist for the topic you're learning, use them instead. I've learned this the hard way. Fields like medicine and language learning (you will still need to create your…

It's great when high quality decks exist, but I doubt they do for what I use it for. Also, even when they do exist, chances are still high you'll find pieces of knowledge missing, and will have to create your own card.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#204

Post by mhb »

BeetleB wrote: post #193
kazinator wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these things don't require Anki. It's a tedious waste of time. > every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map That's a stupid thing to memorize, not to mention constantly churning due to political instability. You really need to gatekeep what you stuff into your noggin. Most educated people could recognize certain countries by shape, like Italy, Africa, USA. But every country? Come on ...

> You really need to gatekeep what you stuff into your noggin. Pointless self imposed limitations don't help.

Unless he runs out of memory.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#205

Post by sodality2 »

No one has mentioned it yet, so I'll drop this alternative: https://mochi.cards/

Much prettier than Anki, has a simpler algorithm that doesn't require rating difficulty, and has lots of the same features. I'm a subscriber just because of the cloud sync - wish I could self-host but I'm happy to support the developer.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#206

Post by [deleted] »

sevg wrote: post #198
kazinator wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these things don't require Anki. It's a tedious waste of time. > every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map That's a stupid thing to memorize, not to mention constantly churning due to political instability. You really need to gatekeep what you stuff into your noggin. Most educated people could recognize certain countries by shape, like Italy, Africa, USA. But every country? Come on ...

A parent is sharing their joy(!) of using Anki to help their child develop curiosity, feel a sense of accomplishment, and learn about the world. And your response at someone else's joy is to swat it down and call it tedious and stupid?

[deleted]

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#207

Post by commenter1234 »

kazinator wrote: post #183
sivers wrote: 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…

Most of these things don't require Anki. It's a tedious waste of time. > every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map That's a stupid thing to memorize, not to mention constantly churning due to political instability. You really need to gatekeep what you stuff into your noggin. Most educated people could recognize certain countries by shape, like Italy, Africa, USA. But every country? Come on ...

I wasn’t aware that Africa was a country, seems like I need to do some flashcard learning myself

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#208

Post by kirill5pol »

SamPatt wrote: 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…

I definitely agree that to absolutely maximize learning you should write the cards yourself but I think it really depends on the value of the content, say it may be 2x as effective for learning but take 5x the amount of effort.

For some things where you want to learn but don't want to/have time to put in full effort premade cards are better than nothing. For example, I ended up learning German to B1 level from Duolingo (+ friends/time in germany) because using Duolingo was pretty low effort, even if it wasn't the fastest most effective way of learning.

I think this is probably true for most things you may want to learn about outside of your job, school, or really strong reasoning behind it. Perfect is the enemy of good as they say

(Shameless plug: I made a tool that makes spaced repetition questions for educational YouTube videos/podcasts that you watch, usually I was forgetting everything and wasn't really that invested to spend the time making decks for everything I watch, so I landed on this! https://www.platoedu.org)

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#209

Post by peter_d_sherman »

Looks really cool!

You know what I would like to see?

First, I'd love Anki / Anki Flashcards to work as a smartphone Android app.

Second, I'd love to see some way to for users to globally share their flash card decks with other users.

Third, I'd love to see a site where someone could search for the decks created by other users.

Forth, it should be permissible for users to charge very smallish amounts of money for their flash decks, and/or share them for free. Their choice!

Anyway, looks really cool and I wish Anki a lot of luck!

Post reply on HN