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Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

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Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#51

Post by chongli »

deepprocess wrote: post #45
chongli wrote: post #11

I'm really skeptical of these sorts of memorization systems, not because I think they don't work (I think they do), but because I see it as a brain "hack" that goes against the grain. What do I mean by this? I think of our memories as a kind of most-frequently-used (MFU) cache. We remember best when we use the information all the time. So when we use this sort of spaced repetition we're trying to artificially "warm u…

> but because I see it as a brain "hack" that goes against the grain. The current, modern, and typical grain if you will: language learning is vocabulary, vocabulary and maybe conversation (maybe). Although early on in childhood, as we develop "receptive language", we are going against this grain naturally by learning phonetics first then moving onwards to vocabulary through conversation. I was in the auto parts stor…

The current, modern, and typical grain if you will

There is no "modern grain". Our brains haven't changed in any fundamental way over the past 10,000 years of civilization. Humans have been learning language as children the same way, for the entirety of history. The modern method of teaching language goes against the way humans naturally learn languages.

Look, talk to anyone who learned a language in school. None of them are anywhere near as good as a native speaker.

He said "that wuks heavy!"

I wonder how often children who make mistakes like this either have a hearing impairment or have parents who think it's "funny" to imitate their children's mispronunciations. Baby talk is a widespread thing and I think it's harmful to children.

When I talk to kids I treat them like an adult. I try really hard to speak the same way to everyone. If someone doesn't understand, I generally pick it up from their body language and go over what I'm saying in more detail. I ask questions to test their understanding.

Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#52

Post by hyperpape »

Stratoscope wrote: post #7

Note to writers: unless you're writing only for an audience that is already familiar with your terminology, it's helpful to spell out acronyms and initialisms the first time you use them. I skimmed this entire article out of curiosity. It uses the term SRS twenty times but never says what it means. I went back to the top and noticed the "not a prerequisite" link, so I looked at that article too. About six paragraphs…

It's worse than that, because even for someone who knows about SRS (via Anki), this is circuitous and hard to read.

Anyone who's a fan of incremental reading/super memo would do us a favor by writing a new introduction that's more straightforward and credible. The fact that the introductions to incremental reading have this feel of "read these hundred things to grasp the genius of incremental reading" is a huge problem.

Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#54

Post by afarrell »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #15

I'm a bit surprised these systems still pay off for people. How many contexts require learning large bodies of unrelated facts, these days? Everything's just a google away. Even in the past, the only context where I would have used a system like this is language acquisition, and it's pretty clear that machine translation is going to surpass me very soon, if it hasn't already. For me, most interesting work involves co…

I find it useful to re-solidify the bits pf a conceptually coherent body of knowledge.

I’m also going to soon need to work on a knarly php codebase for what are some fairly compelling business reasons. I’m planning on making flashcards for the body of unrelated facts that is the php developer experience.

Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#55

Post by Jtsummers »

chongli wrote: post #11

I'm really skeptical of these sorts of memorization systems, not because I think they don't work (I think they do), but because I see it as a brain "hack" that goes against the grain. What do I mean by this? I think of our memories as a kind of most-frequently-used (MFU) cache. We remember best when we use the information all the time. So when we use this sort of spaced repetition we're trying to artificially "warm u…

> In the long run, if your knowledge is situated within a context and connected to other things you know (because you learned by doing) then I believe you'll understand it much better. Memorizing by rote, out of context, will help you to recall facts which often don't have any meaning to you.

I feel it's worth mentioning that the creator of SuperMemo agrees with you here. "Learn before you memorize" (Rule 2 in [0]). Learn the information, then commit portions to an SRS tool to keep them more effectively memorized and recallable.

[0] https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules

Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#56

Post by innocentoldguy »

deepprocess wrote: post #40

Been using Anki for a couple of years to learn Spanish. Was "ok". I now use Anki to learn Spanish but now I add imagery (also known as a mnemonic). Our minds don't remember text too well - but coupled with imagery they do. To boot, Anki supports audio files to even further ingrain the memory if you have the time to create the cards. If you're super imaginative, like the Russian Mnemonist Solomon Shereshevsky, (articl…

I use Anki to learn Japanese vocabulary. I have found it much more useful when I use Kanji vs. Romanization. I see Kanji differently than I do Romanization and I wonder if there isn’t a picture quality to it that gets lost when I Romanize the words?

Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#57

Post by [deleted] »

chongli wrote: post #11

I'm really skeptical of these sorts of memorization systems, not because I think they don't work (I think they do), but because I see it as a brain "hack" that goes against the grain. What do I mean by this? I think of our memories as a kind of most-frequently-used (MFU) cache. We remember best when we use the information all the time. So when we use this sort of spaced repetition we're trying to artificially "warm u…

[deleted]

Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#58

Post by victor106 »

I am an Anki user and would love to try SM but the UI is so clunky it is so hard to use. I wish someone put together a comprehensive guide/book on using SM. I went through a few on YouTube from the creator of SM and they were okay but it was still hard to use.

Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#59

Post by xkfm »

anotheryou wrote: post #53

Is SuperMemo free (unless you book pre-set vocab sets)? And is there an export function to avoid vendor lock-in? (Don't want to tempt my luck and waste my time scripting or writing a GDPR request) and are we talking about https://super-memo.com/ or https://www.supermemo.com/ ?

There's an actual program, and a saas version. The saas version isn't worth paying for (imo) over using AnkiWeb unless you wanted preformatted decks, and the most up to date version of the algorithm.

I've experimented with using the website (mostly because I'm a fan of the software). It's mostly okay. I've been using Supermemo (the actual app) for a few years now on a daily basis. The app itself has a trial if you can find a download link somewhere, and I believe the site might be free if you import your own decks.

As far as lock in, I believe you are also locked in unfortunately. This would be another reason to go with Anki or another solution if you just want flashcards.

Re: Whether to Use Anki or SuperMemo

#60

Post by goerz »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #9
burtonator wrote: post #4

I'f you're a spaced repetition enthusiast you might like Polar: https://getpolarized.io/

What’s the connection to SRS?

It implements an incremental reading system (which is built in to SM, but not Anki), including the ability to generate Anki flash cards.
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