Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes • Hacker News Board

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#71

Post by miranda_rights » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

moate wrote: post #56

slg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to factor in reading speed. If you can remember 7% more but end up reading more than 14% slower, you are better off reading more (or rereading) with the lower 50% retention rate.

That's not entirely valid. There is SOME number where it may not be beneficial because another learning technique would be more efficient, but having to read slower isn't a problem of itself if there goal is simply "get better at retaining this information". Also, there's a certain point where the delta is relevant enough to justify the extra effort invested (things involving safety/security for example).

I rarely re-read things, at least immediately. If it's something interesting (e.g. a link from HN), I'll bookmark it and hopefully come back to it later, but I frequently never get back to it. Something that forces me to stop skimming & forgetting would be helpful.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#72

Post by HarryHirsch » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

unit91 wrote: post #43

curiousgal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, it's based on "the principles of cognitive psychology", a field that's renown for its accuracy and reproducibility.

Yeah, they should rename it "Sans Scientifica".

How about litteræ pinguis serpentis?

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#73

Post by aqme28 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #14

Not to be the usual skeptic, but "scientifically designed" doesn't really-really mean (at least to me) "designed by scientists" (which this thingy is). I mean, nice and all, but what about some actual tests/reports of it actually being noticeably better at remembering what you have read? The concept is very nice and interesting, but besides it: >The science of Sans Forgetica >Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read…

There's a video on the page where they talk about a test they run on it and that it performed "better."

No idea how much better, or if the test was terrible. At least they're on the right track.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#74

Post by bayesian_horse » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

I'd like to see a Chinese version of this...

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#75

Post by toast0 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #69

DonHopkins wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

¡pɐǝɹ oʇ ɹǝpɹɐɥ uǝʌǝ ǝɹɐ sʇuoɟ pǝʇɐʇoɹ ʇnq

What is this black magic

Unicode has a lot of characters that look like latin characters upside down:

ƃop ʎzɐʃ ǝɥʇ ɹǝʌo sdɯnɾ xoɟ uʍoɹq ʞɔınb ǝɥʇ

I used the converter I found here: https://www.fileformat.info/convert/text/upside-down.htm

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#76

Post by glitchc » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

Luc wrote: post #61

It takes on the order of a few minutes for your brain to learn to read that font fluently. It all seems rather silly. Does RMIT have a good reputation?

To throw a match onto the powder keg:

Does the reputation of the university have any bearing on the quality of the research? Sounds like the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy to me.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#77

Post by DonHopkins » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #67

So you'll learn it after a while and it won't serve it's purpose anymore? Each letter should slightly animate like a little slug or render randomly to get benefits of forcing brain to read-with-focus or whatever that is.

I wrote a PostScript font like that once. You just have to use the "setcharwidth" operator instead of the "setcachedevice" operator in your font's BuildChar or BuildGlyph procedure, so your glyphs don't end up getting cached.

Here's an even more dynamic (albeit less efficient) PostScript font I made for NeWS that forks off a light weight process to draw each character in the background.

It actually creates a separate canvas (window) for every character with a lightweight input event manager process listening for mouse events that lets you slide each character around the screen by dragging with the middle mouse button.

Some of the characters are "CycleItem" widgets you can click on with the left button to cycle between different glyphs, and even "SliderItem" sliders and "TextItem" input fields!

Because why should't you be able to create fully interactive editable user interfaces just by drawing text?

https://donhopkins.com/home/code/ifont.ps.txt

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#78

Post by fuzzywalrus » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #14

Not to be the usual skeptic, but "scientifically designed" doesn't really-really mean (at least to me) "designed by scientists" (which this thingy is). I mean, nice and all, but what about some actual tests/reports of it actually being noticeably better at remembering what you have read? The concept is very nice and interesting, but besides it: >The science of Sans Forgetica >Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read…

This reminds a lot of the hype around traffic signs and the font "Clearview" being better for driving. The data collected was the legibility of old signs vs new signs but never accounted for the control of replacing the worn/faded signs with new signs using the old font, or other types of signs.

Turns out it was simply replacement of old signs, and that Clearview actually had reduced legibility in negative-contrast (black on white, instead of white on green).

I'd bet that research would show something that the benefits of this come with cons.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#79

Post by dx87 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #14

Not to be the usual skeptic, but "scientifically designed" doesn't really-really mean (at least to me) "designed by scientists" (which this thingy is). I mean, nice and all, but what about some actual tests/reports of it actually being noticeably better at remembering what you have read? The concept is very nice and interesting, but besides it: >The science of Sans Forgetica >Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read…

It seems plausible, studies have shown that students who handwrite notes retain more information than students that type notes. The reason for this is because handwriting is slower than typing, so your mind spends more time thinking about what you're writing, vs just being a stenographer that writes everything the professor says, giving no thought to whether it's important or not. I can't speak to the validity of Sans Forgetica, but on the surface it at least makes sense.

https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-...

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#80

Post by bluetwo » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

liamzebedee wrote: post #13

I tweeted about this yesterday, from the article: > "Students remembered 57 per cent ... written in Sans Forgetica, compared to 50 per cent .... in Ariel" 7% delta retention isn't so much, is it?

Depends on size of population.