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Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

apps.ankiweb.net

291–300 of 438 posts

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#291
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…

Jesus christ. I often wonder why I can't compete at school and this is why.. you never know how much prep/silver spoon other kids got

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get skipping days is against the algorithm, but wouldn’t it be better to simply freeze the algorithm for a few days opposed to get a backlog at all? A backlog would break the habit for me making me unlikely to return.

Skipping days is not against the algorithm, it accounts for skipped days. In a simplified system suppose that we just double easy card review times, and reset hard cards back to 1. You have a card up for review today, you last saw it N days ago. Two scenarios: 1. You don't delay. You review the card now. It's either hard and reset to 1 (see it again tomorrow) or easy and you see it again in 2N days. 2. You delay. You…

Good point. The real risk in skipping days is that you might forget altogether some of the cards that were due for review. But the Anki default is to review often enough that probability of recall for each card is very high, so if you're only skipping a few days at a time this is not a huge concern. Capping the amount of cards you do per day has a similar effect; Anki will prompt you with the highest-risk cards first, and some will be left unreviewed for the day (hence, practically skipped).

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been studying Chinese with a premade deck for several years and it's working very well. Of course, ideally one would want to create cards, but I only can devote around 30 minutes per day. Under that restriction, creating cards is not really an option.

Which deck?

Spoonfed Chinese.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#294
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with Anki is that you cant control how much workload you have per day. Anki algorithm decides that. Say, you start by doing it little bit every day and you are fine for first three weeks. But then, Anki starts assigning you more and more repetition and that is it. If you do less one day, Anki gives you those cards the next day on top of the normal workload of that day. There is no way out. Worst, the less y…

There is a cap on how many cards will get reviewed from a deck each day. Lower it if the default cap is too high. If you're finding that you reliably do not recall some card Anki will eventually mark it as a leech. Those cards get suspended automatically after some number of lapses. That will reduce your workload because suspended cards are't part of your workload. https://docs.ankiweb.net/leeches.html

The leech feature can also be dangerous if you're unaware of it, because AIUI Anki does not ask you whether to remove a difficult card or not, it just goes ahead and does it.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#295
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…

Jesus christ. I often wonder why I can't compete at school and this is why.. you never know how much prep/silver spoon other kids got

[deleted]

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#296
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Anki is not a goal in itself. It's just a tool to help you cram facts into your brain. Once you have done that, you can and should build associations and knowledge on top of them. Reviews ensure that less-often used facts are not forgotten. Anki is fine for that. But creating Anki cards is effectively a form of review as well. If you automate that, then you miss out on going through your own notes, engaging wit…

> If you automate that, then you miss out on going through your own notes, engaging with the subject, and subdividing it into self-contained pieces Why wouldn't you get this? You just don't have to do it in order to make Anki cards. > which is required to come up with good cards Yes, and ChatGPT does this for you. This isn't theoretical. I've used this to get As in multiple classes in college. This works.

I would rather get cards that are really well designed ___as cards__ (which chat gpt will do better than me given the time I want to spend) even if there is some loss of "value" from not breaking the material into cards myself, because I will make it up on the back end by studying the cards more, and having cards that are more correctly designed for optimal study. Who cares if I did the work of breaking the material into cards myself if it results in shitty cards that aren't good study aids and thus you never use.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is great at taking my notes and turning them into Anki cards. Some tweaks are occasionally needed, but I have done well on numerous exams letting ChatGPT figure out the cards (and the formatting tedium) for me.

Time to write card: x. Number of times review card: x * big number.

I find in my usage that creating a card can take several minutes (5-10 for a hard card) but reviewing them takes a few seconds per occurrence. To reach the initial creation time would take me decades of reviews.

That said, I still make all my cards myself and some cards are trivial. For the trivial cards, review time can outweigh creation time. But trivial cards take seconds.

Crafting effective prompts is important to getting the value out of an SRS. That sometimes is the bull of the "work". Not the review.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a cap on how many cards will get reviewed from a deck each day. Lower it if the default cap is too high. If you're finding that you reliably do not recall some card Anki will eventually mark it as a leech. Those cards get suspended automatically after some number of lapses. That will reduce your workload because suspended cards are't part of your workload. https://docs.ankiweb.net/leeches.html

The leech feature can also be dangerous if you're unaware of it, because AIUI Anki does not ask you whether to remove a difficult card or not, it just goes ahead and does it.

That's true, though the stats screen will tell you how many suspended and buried cards you have. If I track that a few times a week I can usually tell when something has been suspended that I didn't suspend myself.

Re: Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards

#300
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…

You're setting your kid up for a bright future, great parenting.
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