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Effective Spaced Repetition

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Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#211

Post by swinglyj »

sn9 wrote: post #187
ekkeke wrote: post #13

Big fan of spaced repitition, especially for language learning. Unfortunately I feel like it fares worse for topics that require more application instead of memorisation, like mathematics or electrical engineering. Would love know if there was some super effective way to learn these similar to spaced repitiion. So far, the only thing that really works for me is solving lots of problems until I have the technique mast…

You can use SRS to schedule the review of problems you've understood how to solve. Front of card: where to find the problem (e.g., book, page number, problem number). Back of card: where to find a solution (e.g., solution manual, page number, maybe a personal notebook with cleanly written solutions, etc.). I initially tried writing up the problem and solution in Anki, but that was too much of a hassle and realistical…

Same, I put links to online geography quizzes on the front and then record my times on the back (editing each time). I just put them in a separate deck I only do at the computer. I'm gonna add Leetcode links too I think.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#212

Post by laurieg »

When people start using spaced repetition and flashcard software they often end up throwing a big list of "Most common 1000 French words" into it and then promptly being swamped by reviews and giving up.

This is a bad idea for two reasons:

When it comes to spaced repetition, quality beats quantity. Only put in the perfect nuggets of knowledge. You're walking through an orchard and grabbing a single apple, not a whole trees worth.

Spaced repetition is to stop you forgetting, not for learning brand new things. When you study a topic and have an "aha" moment or you make a new connection, that's the thing you should put in. When you make the flashcard it should feel a little too easy. "I could never forget this, it seems so obvious now!". Doing this means your reviews are almost all easy and remind you of your learning experiences. The few things you forget are easily recalled and strengthened.

Joyful and fun review sessions are the most important thing. Maximising adherence (and therefore not giving up) is far more important than squeezing out a 1% more efficient SRS algorithm.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#213

Post by swinglyj »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #191

"This is the most important thing. By far the worst failure mode is to put too much in a flashcard." He's wrong on this one. The problem with making extremely atomic flashcards is that many times it's impossible to prevent slight amounts of overlap between the cards. What this means is that answering card A might contain information that allows you to answer some subsequent card B. As a result you end up effectively…

Overlap isn't actually an issue. Overtime Anki will spread the cards out more so you don't see them together.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#214

Post by Gatsky »

asdfman123 wrote: post #201
Gatsky wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is reversing the causality I think.

Anecdotally, musical instruments are a constant, unending brain game. If they don’t make you smarter, almost nothing will. Of course, there’s the studies, but we’re all capable of looking those up.

The evidence isn't that clear as I read it [1]. But who cares really, playing music is great.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/the-athletes-way/201...

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#215

Post by ehnto »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #166
Avijit_Thawani wrote: post #124

Other software which have nailed spaced repetition (and a much better UI than Anki): - https://www.duolingo.com/ (language learninig) - https://www.chessable.com/ (chess) - https://readwise.io/ (book highlights) - https://examarly.com/ (test prep) - https://app.bestudious.io/login (certifications - CFA) - https://magoosh.com/ (vocabulary)

wanikani.com is a good example for the very specific market of "English speakers memorizing Japanese kanji." Great UI, great community, great sense of humor, well thought out mnemonics... ...and of course I still fell off the wagon after a few months, came back to a backlog in the thousands, and have had tremendous trouble getting back on the wagon.

WaniKani I found filled my head with meanings that didn't correlate to anything, and knowledge that wasn't actually useful.

I am by no means a Japanese expert learner, but I am having much better luck just memorizing real vocab without that intermediate step.

As someone pointed out about the much famed "Remebering the Kanji", you could remeber all the kanji perfectly and still not be able to read Japanese, because Japanese kanji is not equivelant to vocabulary. Actual words, pronunciation and meaning all change when you combine kanji into words.

It's good tangential knowledge to shore up your learning, but it's not something you should spend your entire focus on before you start learning the actual language of Japanese.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#216

Post by rjh29 »

bluGill wrote: post #122
rjh29 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language is really the ideal use case, you cannot stop and look up words every few seconds when talking to someone. And doing it while reading or watching TV spoils the enjoyment somewhat. You need to frontload a ton of data into your mind and flashcards are the best way to do it. Another good use case is country flags, because you can't easily look those up (other than pulling up an image of ALL the country flags)

Only at the beginner levels. Once you get beyond beginner you realize that many words have 20 different definitions, and each definition maps to a different word in the other language - and the problem happens when you reverse as well.

I'm not a beginner (12k cards, 10 years). What works for me personally:

1) test word -> meaning, not word -> word in other language

2) I don't test reverse most of the time, unless I really want to remember how to say something - output tends to emerge by itself given enough input

3) When a word has multiple meanings I add context (usually a related word or colocation as a hint - whole sentences can cause you to associate the sentence with the word but not recall it in other situations). Words with lots of meanings (in Japanese I guess that would be stuff like 引く or in English 'run'?) tend to be very common words so you don't need to use flash cards so much anyway.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#217

Post by asdfman123 »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #209
asdfman123 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So school doesn’t either? If that’s true, then I don’t think we mean the same thing when we say “intelligence.”

School doesn't make people more intelligent. It makes them more educated , which can mean a variety of things depending on the cultural context, such as an understanding of social mores, skills such as reading and writing or arithmetic, and/or ideological indoctrination.

Most other things in the human body seems to be use it or lose it. Sure, innate talent matters a lot, but so does training. You’d never be a track star even with the best genetics if you never left the couch.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#218

Post by rjh29 »

samus wrote: post #106
rjh29 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of making lots of cards, like you say you can just hit Easy and send them into next year, or conversely if you keep forgetting them and they're using up lots of time, just suspend or delete them. When I couldn't remember a particular kanji in Japanese I used to make lots of cards that featured that kanji at the same time, and usually I'd review them all the same time, it's sort of cheating but it always…

It's actually the correct way to make that work. Some Hanzi and Kanji are really abstract and are best learned by associating it with multiple related concepts. Each can have dozens of very distinctive meanings.

Yeah I learned pretty much every kanji with jukugo (did Remembering the Kanji at first, but it wasn't that helpful). A lot of failed cards at first since I was trying to learn recognition of the kanji, the kana reading and the word's meaning - but it got easier over time.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#219

Post by icoder »

laurieg wrote: post #212

When people start using spaced repetition and flashcard software they often end up throwing a big list of "Most common 1000 French words" into it and then promptly being swamped by reviews and giving up. This is a bad idea for two reasons: When it comes to spaced repetition, quality beats quantity. Only put in the perfect nuggets of knowledge. You're walking through an orchard and grabbing a single apple, not a whole…

This is exactly me, although I've had streaks where I just ploughed through the big backlogs just throwing a lot of time against the problem (having a kid now, I can no longer reside to this option)

Question: for language learning: is there anything to say about or help with this initial learning? So before then starting the spaced repetition.

Re: Effective Spaced Repetition

#220

Post by melagonster »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #207
Avijit_Thawani wrote: post #124

Other software which have nailed spaced repetition (and a much better UI than Anki): - https://www.duolingo.com/ (language learninig) - https://www.chessable.com/ (chess) - https://readwise.io/ (book highlights) - https://examarly.com/ (test prep) - https://app.bestudious.io/login (certifications - CFA) - https://magoosh.com/ (vocabulary)

Realistically none of them are full fledged alternatives to Anki. What Anki provides: - Open source guarantees your data won't be gone and/or unusable when the company goes bankrupt in a few years - General purpose, fully customizable card creation - Tunable scheduler, recently also fully tunable scheduling systems like FSRS.

I can understand pay for supermemo, but it is not in list.
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