I've used flash cards (SuperMemo and Anki) for mathematics and do not see anything wrong with using flash cards, memorizing the solutions to 500 complex analysi

I've used flash cards (SuperMemo and Anki) for mathematics and do not see anything wrong with using flash cards, memorizing the solutions to 500 complex analysis qualifier exam questions and using spaced repetition algorithms. I would prefer to have a perfect memory and not to (have to) rely on such techniques, but life is short. J.F. Jardine once told me that "there is no right way to do mathematics." But I enjoy solving problems, e.g., http://publicsphere.org/2014/02/07/exercise/ http://publicsphere.org/2014/02/07/exercise/ http://publicsphere.org/2014/01/04/fibrations/ http://publicsphere.org/2014/01/04/fibrations/ http://publicsphere.org/2013/12/23/markets-and-market-games/ http://publicsphere.org/2013/12/23/markets-and-market-games/ http://publicsphere.org/2013/12/14/elementary-equivalence/ http://publicsphere.org/2013/12/14/elementary-equivalence/ http://publicsphere.org/2013/12/12/another-problem/ http://publicsphere.org/2013/12/12/another-problem/ http://publicsphere.org/2013/12/08/problems/ http://publicsphere.org/2013/12/08/problems/ I have many more in password-protected blogs, notes, etc. This morning a friend informed me about Oppia https://www.oppia.org/ https://www.oppia.org/. I took a few minutes to solve their introductory example, Euler Project Problem 1 (Question: What is the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000?). I did this in Mathematica by combining inclusion-exclusion (expressed via indicator functions if you like) with little Gauss's formula for summing the integers from 1 to n. SumN35[n_] := 3SumN[Floor[n/3]] + 5SumN[Floor[n/5]] - 15*SumN[Floor[n/15]] where SumN[n_] := Binomial[n + 1, 2] I got SumN35[999] = 233168. [OT lamentation ahead] Unfortunately, in my experience, employers don't seem to value this activity--at least I tend not to impress them as a confident person who will passionately defend his answers until shown wrong. I don't have the personality, patience and energy for this kind of bravado. (I have an acquaintance who has the requisite unaesthetic attitude, who is not more intelligent that I am and who landed a job at Google.) I tend to have inspirations that come from nowhere that I have to go back and reason about. The act of convincing yourself that a correct answer is really correct can sound like a lack of confidence to some individuals. To me, projecting confidence requires extraneous cognitive load, but I can be confident for an additional charge.] If you tell me that using flash cards is morally wrong, or if you have a theory of learning that invalidates their use, I won't argue.