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Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)
- rini17 2y agoFine but what to use in practice. Tried Anki and found its algorithm bit infuriating. SuperMemo is better but thoroughly proprietary.
- _Algernon_ 2y agoHave you tried Anki since FSRS was introduced? If not, may be worth giving it another shot.
- victor106 2y agoSorry what is FSRS? And when was it released?
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoIt's a new algorithm that was integrated into the Anki codebase from a very popular add-on, maybe around 2023 or so. I switched over to it basically immediately, and it works like a charm. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39002138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39002138
- _Algernon_ 2y agoTo add to what hiAndrewQuinn said: It basically works by optimizing parameters of the "memory model" against your review history, thus fitting against your particular memory instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach. It is described in (much) more detail here: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The-Algorithm https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The...
- rini17 2y agoDid not know they added it, thanks for the info.
- watwut 2y agoI did. It gave me absurdly long intervals. It kind of assumed that since I can remember some things easily (usually because I learned them outside of Anki), it totally makes sense to assume that about everything. I tried anki multiple times, ended up disliking it each time. FSRF did not made it better.
- mpawelski 2y agoIn my experience, the long intervals can freak you out at the beginning. You might think that it's just stupid and not possible to have that long intervals ("I will remember that in 3 years!?"). But in practice long intervals are shortened when you answer wrong once or more, or when you mark the answer as "hard" when it actually takes time for you to recall a card. For me FSRF really work well, sometimes I see cards that I feel are really showing quite often and when I check the card history it usually shows that I had some "again"/"hard" answers in some recent past, and because of that these intervals and not increasing that much. Plus you can also always increase "desired retention" from default 90%. You will have shorter intervals, but it will of course increase number of the reviews too.
- watwut 2y agoThe big interval was something like 3-6 months. Mostly 3 months, but some had 6. I just concluded I am better off without algorithm that assumes once I have seen a word on flashcard once, it is reasonable to see it next time in months.
- DontchaKnowit 2y agoWhats wrong with Anki? Works like a charm for me
- ukoki 2y agoWhen building a spaced repetition toy, the most satisfying algorithm I found was: * Model the forgetting curve as p = 2 ^ (−∆/h) (p = probability of recall, ∆ = time since last review, h = forgetting half-life for a particular card and user) (see https://research.duolingo.com/papers/settles.acl16.pdf https://research.duolingo.com/papers/settles.acl16.pdf) * Numerically fit this curve to the last ~10 recent reviews of the card by the user to give an estimate for h (the half-life but effectively the intrinsic "difficulty" of the card for that user) * Schedule the next review of the card at the time when a particular recall probability is reached. This probability should be configurable by the user: >90% for an "easy" session, <70% for a "hard" session. * Use the "due date" to queue up cards for review. If a user reviews a card _before_ the due date, ensure that the half-life is never reduced after a succesful review. Provide some feedback to the user to suggest they stop the session when there are no pending cards left ("10 more cards due today, 100 cards due tomorrow, 1000 cards due next week") * Don't schedule the same card twice in a row as this is annoying for the user. If it has just been reviewed and is due next, move it back to second place in the queue. I found this works well once there are 2 or more reviews of a particular card for a particular user. For scheduling the _second_ review of the card I had to invent a heuristic like: if first review failed, schedule again in 1 minute, if first review passed schedule again tomorrow. However in apps where many users are reviewing the same cards, you could probably build a good model of the difficulty of a card for a user before 2 reviews by considering the performance of other users on that card.
- Agingcoder 2y agoI never got try the algorithm - I simply don’t get the UI in spite of all my best efforts. I’m looking for a wanikani like tool, with the same srs , and same excellent and simple ui. I’ll have a look at supermemo ( I don’t mind paying ).
- L_i_m_n 2y agoIf you’re looking for a vocabulary tool, I just released an app for this: https://deft.so https://deft.so. It uses FSRS, which I’ve found to be perfect for me.
- treetalker 2y agoYou might like Mochi for macOS and iOS. www.mochi.cards
- Agingcoder 2y agoThis looks exactly like what I’m looking for. Thanks.
- dutchbookmaker 2y agoThat is surprising, I don't even remember having to look up that much to use the Anki UI. I make cards on a linux desktop and sync to ankidroid. Really one of my all time favorite pieces of software. I would have given anything to have had this 30 years ago in school.
- Etheryte 2y agoThis is putting the cart before the horse. No matter how you slice and dice your equations, everyone intuitively understands you can't really store infinite data in your brain. Trying to claim otherwise is simply academic sophistry. No matter how hard you write your proof, it won't make information theory, basic physics, etc go away.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoThere have been estimates of how much stuff storytellers from oral traditions could remember, and it’s measured in gigabytes. There are caveats beside the obvious (compressibility) that probably cost you an order of magnitude—stories in oral traditions have evolved for easier recall over the generations—but it’s fair to say that the intrinsic limits of human memory are nowhere near what any of us have deliberately memorized.
- GuB-42 2y agoThis is a math exercise, it assumes an infinitely long lived person, as well as a lot of simplifications. That's the same kind of arguments that can make sailboats go infinitely fast as long as there is any kind of wind. It is not useless. It tells you essentially two things. First, it shows the limits of your model. If you have proven that sailboats can go infinitely fast, which is obviously not the case in reality, then it is an indication that your model is incomplete and you have to refine it until it stops giving out nonsense, or establish its limits. Second, it shows that what you have taken into account in your model is not what limits the speed of sailboats or memory recall.
- munch117 2y agoIt's not a math exercise. The author poses a question that is in the realm of psychology or neuropsychology or something like that, and then jumps straight into solving it with pure math, picking premises out from thin air. The premises are obviously wrong, like assuming an infinitely long lived person, which means the answers arrived at will have no correlation with anything factual. You can't fix that with any sort of refinement. To be refinable would require it to be coarsely correct to begin with.
- kiba 2y agoSpaced repetition is an excellent technique, but it shouldn't be the only tool in your learning toolbox. I found that spaced repetition really works as advertised, with software like Anki. However, it is not really suited at learning large amount of facts and concepts. If it took an hour to review your deck, it's not a good use of your time unless the cards are really high value. For example, if I want to learn electronics, my time would be better spent on fiddling with circuits and learning through mistakes of implementation. The nice thing is that concepts are interrelated to each other, not discrete and decontextualized that usually happened with utilizing spaced repetition. You get much better value from learning through experimentation and retain it better. Don't get me wrong, spaced repetition still apply. However, if you can learn something that will last a lifetime, you don't have to repeat it for a long time if ever.
- kelvinjps10 2y agoMost people don't use space repetition as their only study technique, they just use it for 10-15 min and spend most of their time actually doing the thong to learn, for I with language learning, I do 10-15min of anki and 45-90 lf language immersion.
- StefanBatory 2y agoIn fact you shouldn't use Anki for learning itself - put cards only when you're ready, when you have been taught them, and then use spaced repetition for recall.
- exe34 2y agowhat does it mean to have learnt a word if you can't recall it?
- mandmandam 2y agoEver have a word on 'the tip of your tongue'?
- orzig 2y agoI have been wondering about this in the context of being ready for work in the age of LLM‘s. What nobody can deny is that they memorize information at a superhuman level, so it might reduce the value of having done that myself. On the other hand, “couldn’t you just google that“has been an erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing. has been a erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing it.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoA software-based spaced repetition system probably could have made someone appear borderline superhuman in the era before Google. Google cleared a lot of this low-hanging fruit, and then it became "merely" the best way to cram facts into your noggin so you can become an expert at whatever you want, which is still extremely valuable. Your doctor probably used SRS to get through medical school, and now look at how much money they're making. For most professions, nothing -> Google was probably a much bigger jump than Google -> LLMs, so I expect that to still largely be the case. TL;DR: SRS is, perhaps counterintuitively, most useful for those of us seeking true mastery over something.
- cratermoon 2y ago> it became "merely" the best way to cram facts into your noggin so you can become an expert at whatever you want Counterpoint: a noggin full of facts does not an expert make. Makes a good cocktail party trick, or Jeopardy champion. Expert in a subject? Definitely not.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoNecessary, but not sufficient. Even the greatest genius can't operate without any raw material in there.
- szundi 2y agoWhat you remember becomes part of your thinking and reasoning. So no, why would you google something if it doesn’t come to mind as something relevant.
- bloomingkales 2y agoThe redundant nature of mass scale internet content operates on spaced repetition I think. If you doom scroll HN for example, over time you’ll know more about random things. WSB might be a better example. I didn’t realize how many stock ticker prices and movements over the last few years are now embedded in my mind, without deliberately trying. This is the 1000th time you’ll have read the same thing. The hivemind naturally regurgitates the same information at a predictable cadence. We’re due for a few Rust posts on HN, for example. If you stay tapped in, you will always be learning from this organic body.
- rahimnathwani 2y agoNot all spaced repetition is equally effective. Repeated exposure (e.g. re-reading a book) does something, but active recall is much more efficient at solidifying memories.
- david_allison 2y ago> The redundant nature of mass scale internet content operates on spaced repetition I think Not really. Depends on the definition of spaced repetition, but you typically want increasing intervals (normally exponentially) for it to be effective. See 9.1: https://pcl.sitehost.iu.edu/rgoldsto/courses/dunloskyimprovinglearning.pdf#page=33 https://pcl.sitehost.iu.edu/rgoldsto/courses/dunloskyimprovi... [PDF]
- yamrzou 2y agoBesides LineByLine (https://linebyline.app https://linebyline.app), does anyone have tips on memorizing long texts using spaced repetition?
- mcshicks 2y agoI guess it matters how long it is and if you need to know it exactly, and how long you need to retain it. I had to memorize 50 to 100 word phrases and I chained them together with index cards. The first sentence is the cue for the second, the second for the third, etc. Carried them around in my pocket in order and started from first a few times a day until I could do the whole thing. But I only needed to know it exactly for a few weeks usually.
- rahimnathwani 2y agoI don't how well it works in practice for long texts, but for song lyrics I've used this Anki plugin: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2084557901 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2084557901 It takes a text, and creates a bunch of cloze deletion cards, each presenting you with a number of lines, and asking you to recall the next line.
- laurent_du 2y agoNo offense but why don't you memorize the songs by singing them instead? I memorized hundreds of songs just by being a dad and singing to my kids every evening. Of all the things you'd want to remember, song lyrics look to me to be the easiest by far.
- gavmor 2y agoI've gotten tremendous mileage out of exporting book highlights to BufferApp.com and setting them to release only once per day or so. Shuffled, they pop up days, weeks, months after I've put down the book, re-igniting its themes as they spark discussion.
- david_allison 2y agoSuperMemo 19 (2024 - Desktop/Windows) has incremental reading support https://super-memory.com/help/read.htm https://super-memory.com/help/read.htm Disclaimer: AnkiDroid maintainer
- L_i_m_n 2y agoFSRS is a really clever iteration on Anki's SM2 algorithm. I've been playing around with various spaced repetition implementations lately - there's a great collection of open source libraries at github.com/open-spaced-repetition. I ended up using their typescript bindings for a vocabulary builder I'm working on (deft.so) and it's been surprisingly straightforward to implement.
- runarberg 2y agoI used the same binding for a kanji learning app (https://shodoku.app https://shodoku.app). I had some problems with their documentation though. Following their examples was pretty straightforward, but I always had trouble e.g. what is the difference between State.Learning and State.Relearning, or what does fuzzy mean in FSRS parameters, or reps on a Card. You have to either read the algorithm explainer or the Anki source code to understand that.
- wahnfrieden 2y agoCan’t read Anki source unless your work is GPL. Could you share the insights yourself?
- runarberg 2y agoMy work is MIT, as is ts-fsrs. I said anki source code, but I was being hyperbolic. To understand the different exports of ts-fsrs I had to browse around in different repos at https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition (particularly rs-fsrs; which I think is used in Anki proper) as well as read the algorithm https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The-Algorithm https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The... and infer by names being used. I complain here, but this is open source and if I was slightly more ambitious I would submit PR with the missing docs (or at least an issue). PS. my work is here https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku in case you are interested, but the source code bears the mark of being a weekend hobby project, so read at own risk ;)
- gwern 2y agoWozniak estimates that you actually get a maximum of~300,000 based on his decades of data, so it seems the simplified model misses some effect and so converges to the wrong total: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/How_much_knowledge_can_human_brain_hold https://supermemo.guru/wiki/How_much_knowledge_can_human_bra...
- triyambakam 2y agoWow, never heard of SuperMemo and this Wozniak. What an interesting and awesome rabbit hole
- epsilon-delta 2y agoI still remember vividly the day I first heard of SuperMemo and Wozniak, I spent the next ~6 hours reading everything about him and his software. Interesting fact, SuperMemo is written in Pascal.
- david_allison 2y agoThe site's a great rabbit hole to go down for a few days. Woz is the father of digital spaced repetition. Be aware that it's not peer reviewed, and some of the findings take a lot of experimentation if you want to dive deep and reproduce them. My understanding is that his thoughts on sleep are pretty controversial within the sleep optimization community.
- yanis_t 2y agoI merged spaced repetition with knowledge management app (), and I must say it was the biggest personal improvement for me in terms of organising and remembering stuff. As a product though I struggle to make it work. I assume people mostly afraid of their notes and cards stored in the cloud vs local storage, which is understandable. https://www.mindthis.io/ https://www.mindthis.io/
- szundi 2y agoSeems nice. The page is so irritating on iOS that it must dominate your revenue losses though, not fear from cloud. Like portrait screen 4 colums of 2 character wide lines of texts. All video autostarts on fullscreen when gets into view, ehh. Have to ask, have you ever tried this?
- antasvara 2y agoJust so the original poster knows, this also happens on Android running Microsoft Edge.
- dnadler 2y agoOof, yeah, this site is really not great on iOS. The first time I published a site, I was surprised by how much traffic came from mobile devices, even though my page was intended for desktop users. I really shouldn’t have been surprised, but fortunately I had some basic analytics and saw fairly quickly how bad my bounce rate was on mobile and was able to work on it a bit.
- yanis_t 2y agoThanks for bringing this to me. The website is optimized for web, so I didn't really tested on mobile devices, but yeah, this looks horrible... Update: made it look a little bit better.
- laurent_du 2y agoLogseq does it already and is well-established. Probably other solutions like Obsidian can do the same. It's a tough market to be in.
- OskarS 2y agoI don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but: of all the really brilliant people I've ever met, interacted with or learned from, I haven't heard of anyone that used techniques like this. Like, the way they learn things and become brilliant is the exact same way every brilliant person has done it for thousands of years: they read books, they discuss and debate with other brilliant people, they study their subjects and work hard. Like, true intelligence is very rarely about rote memorization of facts, it's about making new connections, being creative, and working really hard. There are no shortcuts, you have to put in the work. Aristotle, Leibniz, Einstein or whatever brilliant person you can think of didn't become who they are using cue-cards. Spaced repetition always seemed like those schemes to get you fit or slim in 30 days that never work. There is exactly one way to get physically healthy, and it's super-unfun: diet and exercise. Same thing with your mind, you have to exercise it and feed it appropriately for months and years. Spend the time you would spend on spaced repetition reading books or watching lectures and doing exercises instead.
- delusional 2y agoI'd argue that you should spend time just thinking. Reading can be a great way to get some new input into to think about, but just getting comfortable silently thinking is really helpful.
- diegocg 2y ago> they study their subjects and work hard And spaced repetition is a very efficient way of doing that. Using cards for spaced repetition has always been common between top students. I would not be surprised if brilliant people used it in one way or another. Modern spaced repetition apps are just the paperless equivalent.
- Etheryte 2y agoLearning isn't only about becoming brilliant. For me personally, spaced repetition is one of the best tools to aid language learning. Classes and such are great for your main progression, but spaced repetition is the way to make the vocabulary actually stick.
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- purplethinking 2y agoI've done the whole spaced repetition and Anki thing, realized that if it's boring, you won't learn as well, and you won't stick with it in the long term, once you miss a week and suddenly you have 863 reps to get through to catch up. Instead, read stuff you're interested, apply it in your work, learn mostly Just In Time for when you need it. Learn by doing.
- keiferski 2y agoStrongly disagree. The worst thing that’s happened to educational theory is the idea that everything needs to be fun and exciting to be worth doing. Some stuff is worth doing because it works, even if it’s a little boring. SRS is one of those things.
- hombre_fatal 2y agoIf an approach is so boring that you don't do it, then what does it matter how effective it might be? Either find a way to make it less boring or switch up the approach. Whatever gets you to keep a habit is what's important. Same with any habit we want to develop. Cooking. Exercise. Language learning. Building software. Meet people.
- keiferski 2y agoBecause realistically doing your Anki cards should take 10-30 minutes a day, maximum. If you can’t slog through 30 minutes of learning vocabulary/etc. then the thing you’re learning isn’t very important to you. SRS isn’t about doing flash cards for hours on end, it’s about determining the maximum retention rate while doing the minimum amount of work. Even then, personally I don’t find Anki that boring at all. But I make custom cards that include audio, images, and other items.
- frereubu 2y agoGP: If an approach is so boring that you don't do it... Either find a way to make it less boring... You: But I make custom cards that include audio, images, and other items. I think you're agreeing!
- yamrzou 2y agoRelated: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22spaced%20repetition%22&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- runarberg 2y agoI wrote a kanji learning app around Anki’s Flexable Spaced Repetition (FSRS) algorithm https://shodoku.app https://shodoku.app My design principal is that I don’t need to be limited to few words, a sentence, and maybe a picture for each flash card. Instead each flashcard can be the all the relevant parts of the whole dictionary related to the kanji that you are learning. Another design principal (where I deviate from Wankikani) is that drawing the kanji helps remembering it. So my app has two sided cards, one for drawing and one for reading. Both reading and writing practice include every word in the dictionary + example sentences that contains that kanji. My third design principal is that I can learn vocabulary at the same time as I learn the meaning and the writing of the kanji (in fact, I like to learn a few vocab words instead of memorizing the different readings). So you can bookmark vocab words you want to learn along the kanji, and the next time the SRS system picks the kanji up for review, these words pop up at the top, to help you recall. Note that the app is still in development, so use at your own risk, although I am actively using it for my kanji-studies. I still have a couple of features missing before I can call it done enough.
- csdvrx 2y ago> I still have a couple of features missing before I can call it done enough. I've checked your website and HN profile but there's no email to contact you, so here are some simple suggestions: when you enter a deck, I would suggest you add 2 shortcuts or buttons: one to randomly jump from the present card to another one of the same deck, and the other to randomly jump to another deck in the review set This is because when faced with a sequence, the brain learns the order the element in the set, which may affect recall. Being able to randomize the set helps prevent that, and give better results.
- runarberg 2y agoThanks for the suggestion. The code is open sourced at https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku I think you were browsing the cards and using the quick navigation to go to another card in the same deck. When you actually review the cards using the SRS system to review the cards (the big “Review” button), there is a setting (in the settings view) to enable fuzz (a small random delay; defaults to on) which will effectively scramble the cards for your next review. I actually had been using it for a couple of months without fuzz and just random noise in my retention abilities were enough to scramble the decks, at least in my experience. But a button in the quick navigation bar when browsing the cards to jump to a random card is not a bad idea.
- dang 2y agoDiscussed at the time: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32381206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32381206 - Aug 2022 (169 comments)
- aerhardt 2y agoAnyone had any experience using spaced repetition for reinforcing math learning?
- runarberg 2y agoI tried it ones to reinforce chess openings, but I never developed the momentum to keep it up. I think I was—and still am—lacking the ability to visualize the moves in my head from the algebraic notation on the cards.
- ramblerman 2y agoCheckout mathacademy.com Not affiliated but 3 months in and I feel my math foundations are finally solidifying into something that will allow me to build into areas previously out of reach
- dcastm 2y agoSame here! Have been using it for a while and I believe it’s the most useful educational tool I’ve used in a very long time
- aerhardt 2y agoI'm also using it lol. But I'm at about 70% of Foundations III and 15% of Stats and Probability and the amount of formulas is starting to be overwhelming.
- lemming 2y agoI haven't worked through it, but Michael Nielsen has a great article about this: https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoI used it in my abstract algebra classes I basically only put two things in there: "Prove X" and my ordinary problems. Then I'd just do that. Those cards usually took at least a minute apiece, but I got really good at abstract algebra, at least when compared to similarly skilled peers. Mind you, I have always been good (perfect SAT score) but not great (never scouted for Putnam) at math. Contrary to what you might think, memorizing definitions is less useful (though not totally useless) than memorizing the proofs of theorems which rely upon those definitions. I would almost certainly go back to doing this if I ever want for a master's degree with a math class again. The idea crosses my mind every now and then to do it with linear algebra, which counterintuitively isn't actually a prerequisite for or all that similar to abstract algebra.
- IssaRice 2y agoI also made a theoretical calculation like this a couple of years ago [1]. I didn't answer the question "Can you memorize an infinite number of facts?" but rather the question "If you add a constant number of cards to Anki each day, what does your daily review load look like in the limit?" [1]: https://issarice.com/long-run-anki-review-load https://issarice.com/long-run-anki-review-load
- david_allison 2y agoWe've recently added a simulator in the deck options of the new scheduler. If you don't want to upgrade to FSRS * Export a colpkg * File -> Switch Profile -> New * Import * Deck Options -> Enable FSRS & Optimize * FSRS Simulator (experimental)
- wahnfrieden 2y agoI made a well-received native iOS/macOS app for mining Japanese web and ebook content (Mokuro manga up next) into Anki or my own companion flashcard app: https://reader.manabi.io https://reader.manabi.io I'm now working on flashcard auto-reviews while reading, so that if you read words/kanji that you have cards for, it'll automatically mark those cards as reviewed rather than ask you to recall them shortly after you just had to recall during your reading. I hope this helps people replace more SRS time with actual reading (or listening)
- leoc 2y agoHilbert's memory palace.
- xhevahir 2y agoAm I missing something here? Because I fail to understand how something like this is susceptible of a priori proof or disproof. Seems pretty obviously an empirical matter.