[HN Gopher] To remember everything you learn, surrender to this ...
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To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm
(2008)
Author : sanmak
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-08-16 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| animanoir wrote:
| Is this the same technique used in Quantum Country?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Yes. And here is one of the author's discussion of how he uses
| Anki (at least at one point in time):
| http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
| mattnewport wrote:
| This should probably be marked 2008.
| dang wrote:
| Added. Thanks!
| djoldman wrote:
| Free app based on the same idea:
|
| https://apps.ankiweb.net/
|
| https://github.com/ankitects/anki-manual/
| reactspa wrote:
| Anki is great... however:
|
| ... having used it for the last 4 years to try to memorize
| vocabulary in certain languages (Spanish & French, recently
| started Chinese), I think it's a _base layer_... (much like how
| Bitcoiners like to talk about BTC 's Blockchain). Reasons:
| 1. I've tired of it. I need a layer that makes me excited to
| use it. 2. I've found it far-far less useful for
| learning other things than rote vocabulary memorization. It
| needs a layer that makes it easy to store and "pull up"
| everything I need to know.
|
| That said, I don't want to sound like I'm looking a gift-horse
| in the mouth. Anki truly is a great piece of software, and my
| sincere thanks to the devs.
| david-gpu wrote:
| In my opinion people often make the mistake of using Anki to
| memorize one-to-one translations of foreign words. It is more
| effective to use it to learn the mapping of whole sentences.
|
| For every word you want to learn, add a few idiomatic and
| representative sentences in Anki. You can do the same for
| every new grammatical concept you want to learn.
|
| And don't forget to use Anki's text-to-speech tools to
| practice listening as well as speaking.
|
| Does it replace other forms of learning entirely? No, but it
| can be a great component of learning a new language.
| wsinks wrote:
| Any chance you've studied either Spanish or Russian and
| have decks to share? I've never fully gotten started with
| Anki, but would love to get back into it to use it to
| expand my vocab with full sentences.
|
| I'll also be checking online now that you've spurred my
| curiosity, just curious if you have ones that you like too.
| lethologica wrote:
| Keep in mind, the full value from Anki really comes from
| creating your own decks rather than using preconfigured
| ones.
| trickjarrett wrote:
| This was a huge eye opening moment for me. I thought it
| was about using a deck, and I always found it less than
| fantastic. Now that I am making my own deck, it is far
| more useful.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| That's exactly what I do. From videos I use losslesscut [1]
| to isolate the sentences I want to practice on and then
| turn those into anki flashcards with some custom tools I
| wrote.
|
| [1] https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| I've used Anki every day for almost a year now for Spanish
| vocabulary. My deck has over 4000 cards. Most are one-to-one
| translations of nouns and verbs, but some are phrases and
| Spanish idioms.
|
| To your first point, it has basically become a habit for me.
| The key is to really commit to it for the first several weeks
| and establish the habit, then you won't feel tired of it as
| reviewing your cards daily becomes something you "just do".
|
| Definitely agree with point 2. The Anki practice really
| shines when I combine it with my conversational practice.
| Memorizing the words alone doesn't make me a better speaker,
| but it does mean there's a lot fewer "what's the word?"
| moments in the middle of a conversation.
|
| I believe Anki memorization + regular conversational practice
| is second only to full immersion as the best learning
| strategy.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > I believe Anki memorization + regular conversational
| practice is second only to full immersion as the best
| learning strategy.
|
| I'd extend this: Memory + Synthesis =
| Useful learning strategy
|
| Blindly learning facts with no intent to synthesize them
| into something else will help you win at trivia contests.
| Learning to integrate those facts into something else (like
| conversation, with languages) is how you effectively learn.
| Both aspects are needed in order to become effective at
| whatever subject you're studying.
|
| That said, with Anki or any other tool these rules are
| incredibly handy:
|
| https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20r
| u...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Give Lingvist a shot (commercial, but there is a free trial).
| ultra_nick wrote:
| I'm building a prototype that does that. It's not done yet,
| but you can check out last month's demo of the "pull up".
| https://www.conceptionary.app/
|
| (Please don't squish my website HN)
| missblit wrote:
| Totally agree with this.
|
| When learning Japanese grinding vocab was extremely boring
| but did a fantastic job of bridging the gap between textbook
| literature and actually being able to read simpler (middle
| school level) native literature / comics / news stories.
|
| And I didn't even need that many words to bridge that gap.
| Maybe like 1000 or so over what I'd already picked up from
| textbooks.
|
| Now? There's no way in heck I'm going back to grinding vocab
| and instead slowly pick up new words by reading tons and tons
| of books.
|
| I still need to rote memorize a bunch of kanji since picking
| them up naturally is pretty brutal, but like with vocabulary
| I'll only do it to the point where I can stumble through YA-
| level books without looking something up every other
| sentence.
| gbear605 wrote:
| There's also Mnemosyne which is fully FOSS unlike Anki.
|
| https://mnemosyne-proj.org/
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://github.com/ankitects/anki/blob/main/LICENSE
|
| I'm pretty sure Anki is FOSS, though perhaps you just don't
| like the AGPL?
| zzzbra wrote:
| I think they may be referring to the iOS app and web app
| which are closed source.
| mikaelmello wrote:
| I think they meant the other parts of the Anki ecosystem
| that are not FOSS, AnkiWeb and the iOS app.
| Asraelite wrote:
| The consensus within the Anki community seems to be that yes,
| the SuperMemo scheduling algorithm (SM-17) is a bit better than
| Anki's (SM-2 variant), but not by enough to matter, so you
| shouldn't worry about it.
|
| But when you look into tests people have done to see how much
| better it is exactly, it's around 30% more efficient.
|
| I still use Anki and am grateful for its existence, but this is
| a huge difference in efficiency. I wish there was a better open
| source scheduling algorithm available.
| tmaly wrote:
| Is there a version of Anki that uses SuperMemo or is there
| another software that implements it?
| SamBam wrote:
| How come Anki cant update it itself? Is SM-17 just a
| different set of exponential-decay functions from SM-2? Is
| that even copyrightable?
|
| Also, if Anki is open-source, I'm surprised that there is no
| unofficial port that uses SM-17. But maybe I'm just ignorant
| of how much work that would involve.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| Woz goes into detail about the SM-17 algorithm here:
| https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Algorithm_SM-17
|
| ... he's built these through decades of thinking of and
| tinkering and working on this singular problem. SM-2 is
| from 1987 for SM for DOS 1.0, and is fairly simplistic
| comparatively.
| Asraelite wrote:
| SM-17 is much more complicated and also closed source. You
| would have to spend a while reverse-engineering it.
| [deleted]
| nzeribe wrote:
| Anki is just a slice of Piotr Wozniak's ideas, and the
| algorithm it uses isn't as good as that implemented in his own
| software, SuperMemo. And besides: it doesn't do incremental
| reading, which is lights-out amazing: https://super-
| memo.com/supermemo18.html
| SamBam wrote:
| I'm interested in incremental-reading, but the video he has
| really doesn't sell it for me [1]
|
| It seems like you skim through an article, extract a few
| facts, and add them to your memorization schedule. Would it
| really help you summarize the article, or help you synthesize
| the arguments and follow the logic leading to a conclusion?
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoQoeK53bP8
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| The SuperMemo scheduling algorithm is a lot easier for me to deal
| with than Anki: if I miss a couple days, it doesn't overwhelm me
| with a punishing review schedule. With that, I really wish Woz
| would open source the SM18 algorithm, dealing with the SM UI is
| really painful. I don't love the Anki UI either, but it's streets
| ahead of SM in that dimension.
|
| Also, tangentially related: I really love Woz's wiki, which is
| filled with interesting insights on learning:
| https://supermemo.guru
| efficax wrote:
| Years ago, I used Anki to memorize 3000 difficult words and thus
| get a perfect verbal score on the GRE. Great stuff!
| dls2016 wrote:
| I used Mnemosyne to memorize baby Rudin, Munkres' Topology and
| large swaths of Dummit and Foote. Perfect scores on analysis
| and topology qualifying exams... good enough on algebra haha.
|
| I had always been reluctant to use memorization but I found it
| helped immensely. Especially as a returning graduate student.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| Does someone have a link to some example code that implements
| this idea? I am working on my own memory-assistance software, I
| would like to use the algorithm.
| adamddev1 wrote:
| I've used this npm package to implement spaced repetition
| review of bookmarked words in a dictionary app. It's nicely put
| together and very readable.
|
| https://www.npmjs.com/package/supermemo
| dbieber wrote:
| roam/sr has code at https://github.com/aidam38/roamsr
|
| This is a plugin for Roam Research that allows you to do spaced
| repetition inline with your Roam graph. It keeps its state
| alongside your notes, and if you want to change your notes
| while doing a review session that's seamless.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://ncase.me/remember/
|
| Not exactly example code, but the algorithm is well-described
| near the end. It should be sufficiently detailed to implement
| that particular variation.
|
| https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/english/ol/sm...
|
| Is one of the SuperMemo algorithms, particularly SM-2,
| described in pseudocode form. Again, should be enough to
| implement it yourself.
|
| Other algorithms can be seen as variations on these themes.
| Like with Anki's implementation (and I believe also
| SuperMemo's) there is jitter added to the schedule so that too
| many cards don't show up together over and over. This is to
| avoid the issue of remembering something because of what it's
| with and not on its own. With language learning, say you enter
| a dozen cards on colors and review them all in one day,
| strictly speaking they could all end up recurring at the same
| time in the future. By adding jitter they get spread out so you
| can avoid accidental "topic" days and end up with a proper mix
| of cards for study.
| callmeed wrote:
| Just look at an image search for "spaced repetition" and you
| can create it from the graphs you see.
|
| Essentially you're creating a set of reminders/events with
| linear or exponential spacing between. A common pattern appears
| to be 1, 3, and 6 days after first learning, which is also 1,
| 2, and 3 days apart from each other.
| dang wrote:
| One past thread:
|
| _To Remember Everything You Learn, Surrender to This Algorithm
| (2008)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17706776 - Aug
| 2018 (208 comments)
| dbt00 wrote:
| Just recent enough for me to remember the shape of the article
| and the gist of the research, but too long ago for me to
| remember most of the details. :)
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Since the early 90s I've used a piano-practice scheme that
| provides spaced repetition. It greatly reduces the time needed to
| either (1) learn or (2) memorize pieces. I always feel compelled
| to cite this poem:
|
| You can get a great deal from rehearsal
|
| If it just has the proper dispersal
|
| You would just be an ass
|
| To do it en masse
|
| Your remembering would turn out much worsal.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I had no idea Ogden Nash had written a poem about piano
| practice.
| DennisP wrote:
| I play piano and it takes me forever to memorize pieces. Could
| you describe the details of your scheme?
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