4 ms·

I've been learning the "Ultimate Geography" Anki deck as well and I'm using a lot of mnemonics. For your specific example: I link Ireland visually to the color

I've been learning the "Ultimate Geography" Anki deck as well and I'm using a lot of mnemonics. For your specific example: I link Ireland visually to the color "green", so its flag starts with green (from the left), while ivory is a yellow-ish color, so the Ivory Coast starts with orange.

aasasd 5y ago
Alas, mnemonics always seemed no-go to me, at least in the usually-advocated ‘use them everywhere’ approach—because I never had any memorable ones pop up in my mind. And if I made up some random ones, I would likely just forget their associations also. IMO Anki is a very different method altogether: it just keeps the info warm in the brain until it's burned into the memory—which is supposedly approximately one the ways memory actually works. OTOH I just learned that green and orange in the Irish flag stand for Catholics and Protestants respectively, while in the Ivory Coast flag, they symbolize some run-of-the-mill cliches. So now I'll know that when I see Catholics first, it's Ireland, and when I see “color of rich and generous earth”, that's Ivory Coast.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  You're missing the main point of mnemonics, which is simply to help recall. Anki is designed to reinforce memories, but any additional context and connections help this recall. The best way to learn is really to combine both: make once the effort to build a mnemonic for things that you don't remember easily or which you expect might end up confusing - and then use anki to reinforce this memory. Our brain works with connections, and connections take effort to form, so all you do to form a single personal mnemonic by definition helps you build these connections, with the mnemonic then helping you later to again find this chain of neural connections that means 'flag of ireland'.

4 ms·

I've been learning the "Ultimate Geography" Anki deck as well and I'm using a lot of mnemonics. For your specific example: I link Ireland visually to the color

by darekkay 5y ago

aasasd 5y ago
Alas, mnemonics always seemed no-go to me, at least in the usually-advocated ‘use them everywhere’ approach—because I never had any memorable ones pop up in my mind. And if I made up some random ones, I would likely just forget their associations also. IMO Anki is a very different method altogether: it just keeps the info warm in the brain until it's burned into the memory—which is supposedly approximately one the ways memory actually works. OTOH I just learned that green and orange in the Irish flag stand for Catholics and Protestants respectively, while in the Ivory Coast flag, they symbolize some run-of-the-mill cliches. So now I'll know that when I see Catholics first, it's Ireland, and when I see “color of rich and generous earth”, that's Ivory Coast.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  You're missing the main point of mnemonics, which is simply to help recall. Anki is designed to reinforce memories, but any additional context and connections help this recall. The best way to learn is really to combine both: make once the effort to build a mnemonic for things that you don't remember easily or which you expect might end up confusing - and then use anki to reinforce this memory. Our brain works with connections, and connections take effort to form, so all you do to form a single personal mnemonic by definition helps you build these connections, with the mnemonic then helping you later to again find this chain of neural connections that means 'flag of ireland'.