[HN Gopher] Spaced repetition for efficient learning (2019)
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Spaced repetition for efficient learning (2019)
Author : tsenturk
Score : 66 points
Date : 2025-12-24 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gwern.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (gwern.net)
| scratchyone wrote:
| Really big fan of the design of the header on this blog, cool way
| to represent tags and article information without it being
| monotonous.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >I like Mnemosyne (homepage) myself - Free, packaged for Ubuntu
| Linux
|
| It seems to use a 2 decade old modification of a now 4 decades
| old algorithm which will be worse and waste more of the user's
| time than using Anki with FSRS or SuperMemo with SM-18.
| zakki wrote:
| Do you have recommended apps using those algorithms?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Anki with FSRS.
| treetalker wrote:
| Based on discussion on HN several days ago, I have started
| using Hashcards (markdown-based flash cards with FSRS; run
| from terminal, but view cards in the browser). Once set up,
| it's pretty simple (e.g., no fiddly settings) which helps a
| lot. Getting new cards added is easy -- especially with a
| Keyboard Maestro macro that I made (global keyboard shortcut
| pops up a window to enter Q/A and select a deck, i.e. md
| file, to append to; entering text only on the Q line creates
| a cloze-deletion card instead). Recommended.
|
| My use case is drilling English --> target-language
| sentences, as well as law-related knowledge, miscellaneous
| facts, etc. Still mulling over what to do about other skills-
| based practices, a la Andy Mutaschak's concept of "spaced
| everything".
|
| - Hashcards: https://github.com/eudoxia0/hashcards
|
| - HN discussion about Hashcards:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hashcards
|
| - Mutaschak's "spaced everything":
| https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Spaced_everything
| yard2010 wrote:
| Anecdotally I stumbled upon this phenomenon when trying to learn
| how to play the piano. I noticed that at the end of a session I
| make so many mistakes and feel like I didn't learn that much, but
| coming back to it after a day or two I really felt the
| difference.
| k__ wrote:
| Learning to play an instrument feels like magic.
|
| You fail the whole day.
|
| Don't have the feeling anything sticks.
|
| Then, the next day it works right from the start.
|
| No new insights, nothing, it just works.
| Qem wrote:
| I never played any instrument, but I had the exact same
| experience getting through difficult stages in videogames.
| k__ wrote:
| Yes, me too.
|
| It seems to be a thing with practicing motion sequences.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| One counterintuitive issue with spaced repetition is that the
| modern algorithms like FSRS are actually almost _too_ good at
| scheduling. The effect is that each card is almost perfectly
| scheduled to be very difficult but still doable. Now, it 's a bit
| weird to call it an issue considering it's the whole concept
| working exactly as designed. But it does cause one follow-up
| problem.
|
| The problem is that in life, we are accustomed to things becoming
| easier as we get better at them. So you start drawing faces and
| it starts out feeling very difficult, but then as you practice
| more and more, it feels easier and easier. Of course, by the time
| it's feeling easy, it means that you're no longer actually
| getting effective practice. But nevertheless, it's the feeling
| that we are accustomed to. It's how we know we're getting better.
|
| Because spaced repetition is so good at always giving you things
| that you will find difficult, it doesn't actually feel like
| you're getting better overall even though you are. The things
| that you are good at are hidden from you and the things that you
| are bad at are shown to you. The result is a constant level of
| difficulty, rather than the traditional decreasing level of
| difficulty.
|
| I've encountered this problem myself. I built a language learning
| app for fun, and some of my users feel like they're not learning
| very much compared to alternatives that don't use spaced
| repetition. In fact, it's the exact opposite. They learn much
| more quickly with mine, but they don't have that satisfying
| feeling of the lessons becoming easy. (Because if I gave them
| easy challenges, it wouldn't be as productive!)
|
| I'm not sure what the best way to solve this problem is. I would
| much appreciate any advice.
| SteveMqz wrote:
| Well the simplest thing would be to have test/benchmarks you do
| at the start and end of each "chapter" (however you define
| that).
|
| You fail miserably at the test at the start of each chapter,
| and crush it at the end.
|
| The difficult part is deciding how the tests are spread out.
| ben_w wrote:
| > I'm not sure what the best way to solve this problem is. I
| would much appreciate any advice.
|
| Serious answer: All the dark patterns.
|
| Loot boxes even if they only give users a digital hat, small
| animated bird (like the green one, but not) doing a silly dance
| when users get enough correct answers, some weird phrases
| sprinkled amongst the lessons which make the users laugh.
|
| Just, please let them have an off switch for people like us :)
| sodality2 wrote:
| The solution is to learn content that you actually use with
| some regularity in your life outside of the testing! If you're
| doing this for education, the payoff might be the exam; if
| you're doing it to learn things without some particular end
| goal, you'll have to make your own way to make it worth it.
|
| The language learning app people could try scheduling monthly
| video chats with native speakers (swapping turns halfway
| through so it's mutually beneficial) and notice their
| proficiency improve.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| FSRS has dials to tweak to show you cards either more or less
| often, so if it's feeling "too hard" you can tweak that dial to
| show you cards when "easier" (at the risk of seeing more cards
| per day since you're seeing them more often).
|
| Failing to do that, one might consider that instead of focusing
| on how hard each card feels, but rather the size of the corpus
| that they have "under their belt". This is the case if you're
| constantly adding new cards - if you are and your cards/day is
| stable, then you have an ever increasing mound of memorized
| knowledge.
|
| If you aren't adding new cards, then the cards/day will
| inevitably go down, barring some actual cognitive issue.
|
| It's a matter of what you focus on as your measure of success.
| bluGill wrote:
| If your only exposure to words is the spaced repititon why are
| you wasting your time learning? Use the language and soon you
| won't need the repitition at all. The app is good to start
| because you need a couple thousand words before you can do
| anything, but in a few months you should be switching from
| learning words to reading and listening (and soon after
| writting and talking). if you do it that way most words will
| occure far more often than the algorithm suggests and become
| easy
| criley2 wrote:
| I have a half dozen language learning apps on my phone and have
| vibe coded a few concepts as well and while spaced recognition
| is amazing, it still suffers from the duolingo "vocabulary is
| not a language" problem.
|
| IMO the way around users feeling like spaced recognition isn't
| progression is by redefining progression away from memorizing
| vocabulary into into becoming proficient in conversation both
| listening and speaking. If spaced recognition vocab is just one
| feature of a holistic experience, users will judge their
| progression holistically.
|
| I'm really waiting for that one app that finally connects
| ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode or Gemini Live to a context-aware
| and well trained language tutor. I can already have impromptu
| practice sessions with both in Mandarin and English but they
| quickly lose the plot regarding their role as a tutor. I'd love
| to have them available as part of a learning journey. I can
| study vocab and flash cards all day but the second that voice
| starts speaking sentences and I need to understand in real
| time, I freeze up. The real progress is conversing!
| copperx wrote:
| How is spaced recognition different from spaced repetition?
| Recall is different from merely recognition, right?
| criley2 wrote:
| Sorry, just a typo on my part, I meant spaced repetition.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| >but the second that voice starts speaking sentences and I
| need to understand in real time, I freeze up. The real
| progress is conversing!
|
| What helped me a lot was doing a lot of listening exercises.
| Start with concentrating on what you can recognize, not on
| what you can't. Then listen again and and again and again
| trying to recognize more and more.
| criley2 wrote:
| That's what I do and it helps and many apps let me do just
| that. Repeating it, reading the hanzi, reading the pinyin,
| and it all makes sense.
|
| But there's something about the "conversation" between a
| real human or an AI voice mode where you're not on the
| rails. It's real time and you have to lock in and
| understand. That's where the magic happens!
| Denzel wrote:
| 'Desirable difficulty' is the research term. To solve your
| problem, first understand your users need a mindset change. We
| need to connect their action to a "satisfying feeling" as you
| said.
|
| You want your users to be like weight lifters. No lifter comes
| out the gym saying, "Man that was the best workout, felt so
| easy," to the contrary, lifters use progressive overload to
| induce difficulty because that difficulty connects to the
| results they want.
|
| For your users, you need some way to measure the outcome, so
| that you can show them, "hey look, that mild discomfort lead to
| more progress on what you care about," and then you need to
| consistently message that some difficulty is good.
|
| Mindset change takes consistency and time. Won't happen over
| night. You'll know you succeeded when students become aware of
| "hey, I'm not learning as well if it doesn't feel difficult",
| and then react by increasing the challenge.
| zahlman wrote:
| Just have the program point out the size of the word pool it's
| drawing from. "Number go up" is objective and clearly motivates
| people in other disciplines (someone else mentioned lifting
| weights).
| yanis_t wrote:
| While I've been working on my knowledge base meets spaced
| repetition project, I looked through a bunch of articles, and
| it's very easy in fact.
|
| We keep forgetting stuff. But we can remember it more by active
| recalling. And there is an evidence that you can recall with
| intervals that grow, to make it optimal. That's it really.
| Everything else is tooling on top of that simple fact.
|
| * https://github.com/odosui/mt
| bluGill wrote:
| This is memorization. There is debate on if that is learning. At
| the very least you need to apply this learning to real life or
| you will never know if you learned. So get to that point quick.
| copperx wrote:
| Memorization _is_ learning. I don 't think there's debate about
| that.
|
| Whether memorization is useful on its own largely depends on
| the task.
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