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Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

apps.ankiweb.net

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Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#221

Post by BeetleB »

jwrallie wrote: post #39
jan_Inkepa wrote: post #3

Every few years I use Anki heavily for language stuff (German, more recently Latin and Classical Chinese), up to 90 minutes a day, but I can never keep the workload under control, or my habits change, and give it up. I still benefit from a year of training, but it seems the long-tail of spaced repetition doesn't work for me at all. But so long as I get to the point where I can read or watch TV, the considerable effor…

I had the same experience. I invested a lot of time on Anki and it paid back, but I could never stick to it. There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3 days because of life and the huge backlog is too much that I give up. I recently started to use Supermemo because of some comments on HN, and so far it have been going quite well. I feel less overwhelmed when I have to take a break, I think the algorithm (or…

> There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3 days because of life and the huge backlog is too much that I give up.

Some things I do to manage this:

You can put an upper bound on the number of cards reviewed per day. For me it's 50. After that it says I'm done for the day and I wait till the next day.

If missing only 2-3 days leads to such a huge backlog, you really need to take a break in adding new cards. My aim is to spend no more than 5-10 minutes per day reviewing cards. If it seems I always have too many cards to review, I don't add any new cards until I get only a few cards to review per day (when really busy, I don't add a new card until I have a day with 0 cards).

You can only learn so much per day. You need to limit card additions to ensure you don't exceed that amount.

The other thing I noticed is that I had two types of cards: One where the answer can be instantaneous (e.g. facts). And ones where some thinking is involved (proof sketch of a theorem, details of some algorithm, etc). The latter would kill the experience because of the time involved. So I separated the decks: Simple cards (the majority) go in one deck and this is reviewed daily. Hard cards have their own deck(s) and I'm not as committed to them - I work on them only when I know I have time and am committed to it.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#222

Post by Tomte »

ListeningPie wrote: post #217

Anki deck is one of the first if not the first spaced repetition tool. What do they do to remain relevant after all these years, ain't broke don't fix it, or is there more?

Not even close. Anki came out 2006, SuperMemo's first version came out 1987!

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#223

Post by BeetleB »

nairboon wrote: post #42

Anki is a great software, but unfortunately it is quite difficult to install on Linux systems. Almost all packages on major distros are by now years out of date or kicked out, because Anki changed its build systems so many times, that the existing package maintainers simply dropped it: https://github.com/ankitects/anki/issues/1378 Nowadays, the Anki version in Ubuntu is from 2019! The snaps are also hopelessly outdat…

Use Mnemosyne instead.

I personally use org-drill on Emacs.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#224

Post by BeetleB »

kazinator wrote: post #211
BeetleB wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Self-imposed limitations are absolutely key to being effective in life. You cannot go everywhere, do everything and memorize everything.

Self-imposed limitations are key to being effective. I was referring to pointless self imposed limitations.

I was reading an interview with Andy Matuschak[1].

> One of the things that I think is kind of weird about this memory system stuff, or like memory champions, or something like that is “Oh, if you do these things, will you start to forget other normal human stuff?” And what's weird is, no. I've been doing this memory system stuff for years and I just know more stuff now. This is aligned with the experimental literature, which seems to suggest that, there's probably upper bounds but we're not close to them. Some of these memory champions have memorized maybe two orders of magnitude more things than I have practiced. Certainly people who are multi-lingual have really, really absurd numbers of things memorized. So there isn't a resource management argument.

The notion that stuffing your brain with trivia will be damaging is merely an unwarranted fear.

[1] https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/andy-matuschak

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#225

Post by clbrmbr »

kebsup wrote: post #94
clbrmbr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. You rock at UX design. This is amazing… Only trouble I have tbh is figuring out what I want to read in German! But I’ve signed up and will give this a spin, and send what feedback I can.

Thanks! My design is the one on the website. The neo-brutalism was done by a junior designer who was looking for her first project and she did extremely good job!

The real delight point for me was how painless it was to mark 700 words as already known and pickup a bunch of fairly common words i am not comfortable using (like “allerdings” and “eigentlich”) using that scroll-to-set-learned control.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#226

Post by mumblemumble »

pavelboyko wrote: post #36

Spaced repetition, especially when using tools like Anki, is effective for memorizing facts. However, memorization represents the most basic level of learning objectives, see e.g. [1] and [2]. Are there any recommended tools for practicing more advanced levels of knowledge, such as relational analysis, synthesis, and critical evaluation? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy [2] https://en.m.wikipedi…

The best tool for that kind of thing is developing good note-taking skills.

When I'm doing language study, for example, the backbone of my memory reinforcement strategy is a plain old pen-and-paper notebook. Anki is only used for specific, targeted reinforcement.

Most my time with Anki these days is learning Chinese characters. That's arguably an ideal use case for brute-forcing with SRS, and that is indeed a very popular way to learn them. But I prefer to start with good note-taking there, too. I keep a notebook where I write down new characters and make some notes about their composition, etymology, and the nature of any relationship they might have with other characters that have a similar appearance or show up as components in this new one. IME even the simple act of physically jotting down a handwritten note to not confuse 买 with 卖 or 找 with 我 is worth some large number of flashcard repetitions all by itself.

I also create cards for hanzi in Anki, but typically only after I've already encountered it a few times in my reading and it's starting to feel familiar. Leech cards are a huge waste of time when tackling a large subject, so I don't really like to add a card to my deck until I'm reasonably confident that I won't be hitting the "again" button on it more than once or twice, if ever.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#227

Post by unshavedyak »

xbar wrote: post #149
pavelboyko wrote: post #36

Spaced repetition, especially when using tools like Anki, is effective for memorizing facts. However, memorization represents the most basic level of learning objectives, see e.g. [1] and [2]. Are there any recommended tools for practicing more advanced levels of knowledge, such as relational analysis, synthesis, and critical evaluation? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy [2] https://en.m.wikipedi…

I think you are minimizing something that is very important. Understanding deeply and completely any topic is much easier when you understand deeply and completely the fundamental components and concepts--which starts with memorization.

Yea, i thought that was studied, but perhaps not. Ie the knowledge we retain help us formalize larger more complex thoughts. Perhaps facts are a too small unit? Though i don't see why you couldn't also use Spaced Rep to memorize larger relationships.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#229

Post by dse »

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…

one deck or a different one for each topic ?

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#230

Post by dotancohen »

mhb wrote: post #204
BeetleB wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unless he runs out of memory.

That's what swap is for.

When I stop responding and the wife asks if I'm still listening, sometimes I tell her I'm swapping right at the moment.

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