7 ms·

I've used spaced repetition to help learn stuff in general. It's one of the most rewarding things I've done. Some general thoughts: 1. A lot of spaced repetiti

by yen223 7y ago

I've used spaced repetition to help learn stuff in general. It's one of the most rewarding things I've done. Some general thoughts: 1. A lot of spaced repetition apps don't optimize for fast card creation. I like to make a card as soon as I come across something interesting, but the delay to get Anki started, and to create the card, etc just makes it frustrating. I wound up building my own app for this. 2. Cloze deletion is surprisingly effective. For those who don't know, cloze deletion involves taking a sentence, blanking the interesting parts out e.g. "The moon landing happened on _______", and trying to recall the blank parts. This is effective because it's a quick way to make cards, thus solving the problem of slow card creation. 3. I fared better with lots of small, one-sentence cards. My rule of thumb is that a card should fit in a tweet. 4. Subjectively speaking, using spaced repetition didn't just help me recall stuff in my cards, it also helped me recall stuff in general.

eterps 7y ago
> but the delay to get Anki started, and to create the card, etc just makes it frustrating I have this URL in my bookmarks toolbar: https://ankiuser.net/edit/ https://ankiuser.net/edit/ It enables me to directly add new cards (just don't forget to sync)
yewenjie 7y ago
For frictionless card-creation I have made an org-capture template for quickly adding cards to an org-mode file via a custom Emacs pop-up frame. This is accessible from everywhere with the keybinding (Super + c + a). Exporting to Anki from Emacs is done via the anki-editor mode for Emacs. https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor
- kqr 7y ago
  There is also org-drill that implements spaced repetition in org mode.
  - oehtXRwMkIs 7y ago
    I think org-drill is just better overall since it's all stored as plain-text at the end of the day and each card is really editable and accessible. Anki in my experience has a clunky, slow GUI. It can't beat the creation and editing speed from vim keybindings and macros.
    - telotortium 7y ago
      IME org-drill is quite slow to run through reviews, with a lot of lag.
      - kqr 7y ago
        This sounds like an issue with something else you have installed in Emacs. I suggest running the profiler to see what is actually taking time. Org-drill itself on an otherwise vanilla config is fast, so it could be that you have hooks that are slow or something.
    - kqr 7y ago
      The thing I miss with org-drill is being able to do it on the phone. I have considered trying to integrate it into Orgzly but it does seem like a big project, unfortunately.
- bloopernova 7y ago
  Thank you for creating and sharing that, I hadn't thought to look for an Emacs to Anki connector before. Being able to add my slow-but-steady Lisp learning notes into Anki would be very cool.
gwd 7y ago
One of the issues Anki has, I find, is that if you end up taking a long break for whatever reason, there's no way to "reset". I used Anki to study Chinese for a period of about 10 years. At some point I decided that I wanted to memorize the poker "outs" (probabilities of filling out a hand based on what had currently been dealt). Then I went through a time where I was really busy and didn't study the poker deck for a month (but I made time for Chinese). When I came back to the poker deck, the "spaced repetition" system was completely broken: I had a massive long list of cards that had expired, most of which I'd completely forgotten; but it just kept showing them to me in one giant loop, rather than focusing on a few to actually teach me. And I didn't even have a clean way of telling it, "Just pretend I haven't seen any of these cards at all". I ended up just deleting the deck; that discouraged me from doing anything else I wasn't willing to commit to doing every single day.
- Shacklz 7y ago
  I'm kind of new to Anki myself (started a couple of weeks ago) so I might be wrong, but I think you can limit the amount of cards you want to review on a per-deck-basis. The default-number is quite high (200 per day I think?). If you make that number the same as the "new cards per day"-number, that might be a work around for your issue?
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  There are a couple ways to do it that I've found. None of them is perfect for every situation I've encountered. I think that part of the reason why there's no clean way to do it is that there are so many specific things someone might want to do: - If you want to just push cards to the back of the queue, but remember timings and history, there's a built-in command to do that. - If you want to change the current interval of a card, but keep your history, there's also a built-in command for that. - If you need to do the above in bulk, the "Reset Card Scheduling" plugin can make this a lot more convenient. - If you really do want to completely reset a card, forget all history, etc., and treat it as a new card, there's the "Remove Card History" plugin. Finally, when returning to old decks, I found I usually get the most mileage by leaving all that stuff alone and just suspending the whole thing, and then un-suspending them at a steady pace. I neglected my Kanji deck for months, and I used that approach to get myself back up to speed by doing the catch-up review in the original (RTK) order I originally learned them rather than based on Anki's priority.
bitexploder 7y ago
I have some cool decks, but I am terrible about reviewing them frequently. It just becomes another chore. Maybe I should really embrace it. I spent a few months brushing up on biology and that was really amusing but I fell out of the habit :/
- warrentr 7y ago
  Using the reminder aka notifications feature of the android app got the habit to stick for me. Total pita to figure out how to get it turned on though :)
tryitnow 7y ago
In my experience with Anki all four of your points are spot on, especially number 3. A big problem I see with pre-made decks is that they contain just too much information.
r00fus 7y ago
> 3. I fared better with lots of small, one-sentence cards. My rule of thumb is that a card should fit in a tweet. Can someone tell me if this is a crazy good idea? Social network + spaced repetition. Why should you build all your own cards? Taking a class with classmates? Create a group & create cards during lecture, review/curate cards afterwards during study session, then rate which ones were most useful after the exam (or homework).
- josinalvo 7y ago
  not crazy, i think but my cards are hard to read by other parties, when I optimize for my own learning
  - r00fus 7y ago
    Agreed. I guess what I'm suggesting is a socialization of the act of card creation & curation so the group creates/uses them.
- temo4ka 7y ago
  Memories are very personal; something that works for you won't work for your friend, even if you're learning the same thing in a class.
- CGamesPlay 7y ago
  The actual act of creating the cards is also useful to the learning process. Even if you are copying someone else's cards, copying them by hand will lead to better retention than having a computer import them.
  - zadokshi 7y ago
    I used to think that. Now I’m not so sure.
- weugek 7y ago
  I've head a similar idea, except not in context of a group project but of a wiki. So there's a wider audience for any particular topic and more people to create and improve the exercises: cards, cloze deletion tests, etc. I think it's important that exercises are tightly linked to the source material, like to a specific paragraph of an article, etc. So these materials should probably be added to the system as well. * With the same starting point it should be easier to have a proper discussion. * A new person can read the source and understand cards more easily with context. * Later if they've forgotten the topic completely they can reread it and hopefully remember faster. I also had some ideas about being able to discuss and alter every paragraph in the source. Allow it to evolve to be more clear as people come and discuss confusing points.
pgroves 7y ago
Since you've made you're own app, and have noticed that a good card is a good tweet: I want an app that puts my cards in my twitter feed. I check twitter way too much and don't like opening Anki to review my cards. Not sure exactly how it would work, maybe I see a few tweets, and then there's a 'card' tweet, and I interact with it as usual and then get more tweets. Just an idea.
rudnek 7y ago
For speeding up the card creation I've recently made a CLI application [1]. It generates cards from Markdown files. I'd recommend having its own repository with Markdown files grouped by target domain using tags for every card. It'd help to search quickly relevant cards even in the same domain. [1] https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki
- istjohn 7y ago
  Nice! I made a similar thing for myself, but without nearly as much polish as your project [1]. I use a custom text file format to allow creation of cloze deletions and reversible cards as well as basic cards. I also annotate text files on export so that I can export the file again without creating duplicate cards. The big shortcoming of my script is that it generates .tsv files and Anki only allows .tsv files to contain one note type. They also do not incorporate media. I'd like to be able to sync edits made in Anki back to the text files and vice versa. It'd be really cool to integrate a text file parser and alternative card editing mode into Anki with a plugin. Perhaps I'll send some PR's your way instead of duplicating effort. 1. https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang

by yen223 7y ago

eterps 7y ago

> but the delay to get Anki started, and to create the card, etc just makes it frustrating I have this URL in my bookmarks toolbar: https://ankiuser.net/edit/ https://ankiuser.net/edit/ It enables me to directly add new cards (just don't forget to sync)

yewenjie 7y ago

For frictionless card-creation I have made an org-capture template for quickly adding cards to an org-mode file via a custom Emacs pop-up frame. This is accessible from everywhere with the keybinding (Super + c + a). Exporting to Anki from Emacs is done via the anki-editor mode for Emacs. https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor

kqr 7y ago
There is also org-drill that implements spaced repetition in org mode.
- oehtXRwMkIs 7y ago
  I think org-drill is just better overall since it's all stored as plain-text at the end of the day and each card is really editable and accessible. Anki in my experience has a clunky, slow GUI. It can't beat the creation and editing speed from vim keybindings and macros.
  - telotortium 7y ago
    IME org-drill is quite slow to run through reviews, with a lot of lag.
    - kqr 7y ago
      This sounds like an issue with something else you have installed in Emacs. I suggest running the profiler to see what is actually taking time. Org-drill itself on an otherwise vanilla config is fast, so it could be that you have hooks that are slow or something.
  - kqr 7y ago
    The thing I miss with org-drill is being able to do it on the phone. I have considered trying to integrate it into Orgzly but it does seem like a big project, unfortunately.
bloopernova 7y ago
Thank you for creating and sharing that, I hadn't thought to look for an Emacs to Anki connector before. Being able to add my slow-but-steady Lisp learning notes into Anki would be very cool.

gwd 7y ago

One of the issues Anki has, I find, is that if you end up taking a long break for whatever reason, there's no way to "reset". I used Anki to study Chinese for a period of about 10 years. At some point I decided that I wanted to memorize the poker "outs" (probabilities of filling out a hand based on what had currently been dealt). Then I went through a time where I was really busy and didn't study the poker deck for a month (but I made time for Chinese). When I came back to the poker deck, the "spaced repetition" system was completely broken: I had a massive long list of cards that had expired, most of which I'd completely forgotten; but it just kept showing them to me in one giant loop, rather than focusing on a few to actually teach me. And I didn't even have a clean way of telling it, "Just pretend I haven't seen any of these cards at all". I ended up just deleting the deck; that discouraged me from doing anything else I wasn't willing to commit to doing every single day.

Shacklz 7y ago
I'm kind of new to Anki myself (started a couple of weeks ago) so I might be wrong, but I think you can limit the amount of cards you want to review on a per-deck-basis. The default-number is quite high (200 per day I think?). If you make that number the same as the "new cards per day"-number, that might be a work around for your issue?
mumblemumble 7y ago
There are a couple ways to do it that I've found. None of them is perfect for every situation I've encountered. I think that part of the reason why there's no clean way to do it is that there are so many specific things someone might want to do: - If you want to just push cards to the back of the queue, but remember timings and history, there's a built-in command to do that. - If you want to change the current interval of a card, but keep your history, there's also a built-in command for that. - If you need to do the above in bulk, the "Reset Card Scheduling" plugin can make this a lot more convenient. - If you really do want to completely reset a card, forget all history, etc., and treat it as a new card, there's the "Remove Card History" plugin. Finally, when returning to old decks, I found I usually get the most mileage by leaving all that stuff alone and just suspending the whole thing, and then un-suspending them at a steady pace. I neglected my Kanji deck for months, and I used that approach to get myself back up to speed by doing the catch-up review in the original (RTK) order I originally learned them rather than based on Anki's priority.

bitexploder 7y ago

I have some cool decks, but I am terrible about reviewing them frequently. It just becomes another chore. Maybe I should really embrace it. I spent a few months brushing up on biology and that was really amusing but I fell out of the habit :/

warrentr 7y ago
Using the reminder aka notifications feature of the android app got the habit to stick for me. Total pita to figure out how to get it turned on though :)

tryitnow 7y ago

In my experience with Anki all four of your points are spot on, especially number 3. A big problem I see with pre-made decks is that they contain just too much information.

r00fus 7y ago

> 3. I fared better with lots of small, one-sentence cards. My rule of thumb is that a card should fit in a tweet. Can someone tell me if this is a crazy good idea? Social network + spaced repetition. Why should you build all your own cards? Taking a class with classmates? Create a group & create cards during lecture, review/curate cards afterwards during study session, then rate which ones were most useful after the exam (or homework).

josinalvo 7y ago
not crazy, i think but my cards are hard to read by other parties, when I optimize for my own learning
- r00fus 7y ago
  Agreed. I guess what I'm suggesting is a socialization of the act of card creation & curation so the group creates/uses them.
temo4ka 7y ago
Memories are very personal; something that works for you won't work for your friend, even if you're learning the same thing in a class.
CGamesPlay 7y ago
The actual act of creating the cards is also useful to the learning process. Even if you are copying someone else's cards, copying them by hand will lead to better retention than having a computer import them.
- zadokshi 7y ago
  I used to think that. Now I’m not so sure.
weugek 7y ago
I've head a similar idea, except not in context of a group project but of a wiki. So there's a wider audience for any particular topic and more people to create and improve the exercises: cards, cloze deletion tests, etc. I think it's important that exercises are tightly linked to the source material, like to a specific paragraph of an article, etc. So these materials should probably be added to the system as well. * With the same starting point it should be easier to have a proper discussion. * A new person can read the source and understand cards more easily with context. * Later if they've forgotten the topic completely they can reread it and hopefully remember faster. I also had some ideas about being able to discuss and alter every paragraph in the source. Allow it to evolve to be more clear as people come and discuss confusing points.

pgroves 7y ago

Since you've made you're own app, and have noticed that a good card is a good tweet: I want an app that puts my cards in my twitter feed. I check twitter way too much and don't like opening Anki to review my cards. Not sure exactly how it would work, maybe I see a few tweets, and then there's a 'card' tweet, and I interact with it as usual and then get more tweets. Just an idea.

rudnek 7y ago

For speeding up the card creation I've recently made a CLI application [1]. It generates cards from Markdown files. I'd recommend having its own repository with Markdown files grouped by target domain using tags for every card. It'd help to search quickly relevant cards even in the same domain. [1] https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki

istjohn 7y ago
Nice! I made a similar thing for myself, but without nearly as much polish as your project [1]. I use a custom text file format to allow creation of cloze deletions and reversible cards as well as basic cards. I also annotate text files on export so that I can export the file again without creating duplicate cards. The big shortcoming of my script is that it generates .tsv files and Anki only allows .tsv files to contain one note type. They also do not incorporate media. I'd like to be able to sync edits made in Anki back to the text files and vice versa. It'd be really cool to integrate a text file parser and alternative card editing mode into Anki with a plugin. Perhaps I'll send some PR's your way instead of duplicating effort. 1. https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang