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No. Spaced repetition is a good tool for learning vocabulary. It's not a silver bullet / holy grail / MacGuffin / etc. There's a community of people obsessed

by blagie 4y ago

No. Spaced repetition is a good tool for learning vocabulary. It's not a silver bullet / holy grail / MacGuffin / etc. There's a community of people obsessed with spaced repetition. None of them seem to have accomplished spectacular feats of learning. There's a good reason for that. (The flip side, however, is that many people who have accomplished spectacular feats of learning DO often use spaced repetition, but among a broader repertoire).

rmbyrro 4y ago
Could you please help me understand further? I found this a bit contradictory: > None of them seem to have accomplished spectacular feats of learning > many people who have accomplished spectacular feats of learning DO often use spaced repetition --- Second note: > Spaced repetition is a good tool for learning vocabulary. This might be a misconception? The first ever published paper about spaced repetition was about vocabulary. But research has shown its merits are valid for many other types of knowledge. By the way, memorizing coding vocabulary is arguably similar to human language vocabulary.
- blagie 4y ago
  Note 1: It's not contradictory. I'll give an example: Landmines are a good tool for slowing an enemy army. However, if your military consists of *just* landmines, it won't be very effective. That doesn't make landmines a bad tool. Indeed, even a super-weapon, like the first jet fighter, won't win a war if it's your *only* tool. Learning -- even a language -- is a complex process, and you need many tools. Spaced repetition is awesome for factoids. If you want to learn a language, you need to memorize vocabulary. SR is great for that. If you add 5-15 minutes of spaced repetition to a good language program, it will help a lot. If that's where you spend a majority of your time, you'll learn very little. However, SR won't help you practice a broad range of skills around listening, speaking, understanding communication styles, or quite a few other things. Ditto with physics and math. If you know equations, it accelerates everything else. However, the bulk of the knowledge isn't factual or procedural; it's conceptual. Simply memorizing formulas won't help you. On the other hand, in most cases, once you learn conceptual knowledge in physics, you never forget it. "Coding vocabulary" isn't in my top-50 problem with junior developers. Naming variables, algorithms, systems design, etc. are. Most of those don't align to SR. I'd take a programmer who spends 8 hours coding over one who spends 8 hours memorizing library calls in an SR system. Note 2: The spacing effect is /somewhat/ broadly applicable (but far from universal), but spaced repetition specifically is only helpful for factoid-style knowledge. You can look over the different classifications of knowledge, skills, and abilities (factual, conceptual, procedural, declarative, etc.).

by blagie 4y ago

rmbyrro 4y ago

Could you please help me understand further? I found this a bit contradictory: > None of them seem to have accomplished spectacular feats of learning > many people who have accomplished spectacular feats of learning DO often use spaced repetition --- Second note: > Spaced repetition is a good tool for learning vocabulary. This might be a misconception? The first ever published paper about spaced repetition was about vocabulary. But research has shown its merits are valid for many other types of knowledge. By the way, memorizing coding vocabulary is arguably similar to human language vocabulary.

blagie 4y ago
Note 1: It's not contradictory. I'll give an example: Landmines are a good tool for slowing an enemy army. However, if your military consists of *just* landmines, it won't be very effective. That doesn't make landmines a bad tool. Indeed, even a super-weapon, like the first jet fighter, won't win a war if it's your *only* tool. Learning -- even a language -- is a complex process, and you need many tools. Spaced repetition is awesome for factoids. If you want to learn a language, you need to memorize vocabulary. SR is great for that. If you add 5-15 minutes of spaced repetition to a good language program, it will help a lot. If that's where you spend a majority of your time, you'll learn very little. However, SR won't help you practice a broad range of skills around listening, speaking, understanding communication styles, or quite a few other things. Ditto with physics and math. If you know equations, it accelerates everything else. However, the bulk of the knowledge isn't factual or procedural; it's conceptual. Simply memorizing formulas won't help you. On the other hand, in most cases, once you learn conceptual knowledge in physics, you never forget it. "Coding vocabulary" isn't in my top-50 problem with junior developers. Naming variables, algorithms, systems design, etc. are. Most of those don't align to SR. I'd take a programmer who spends 8 hours coding over one who spends 8 hours memorizing library calls in an SR system. Note 2: The spacing effect is /somewhat/ broadly applicable (but far from universal), but spaced repetition specifically is only helpful for factoid-style knowledge. You can look over the different classifications of knowledge, skills, and abilities (factual, conceptual, procedural, declarative, etc.).