[HN Gopher] Yearly analytics on my spaced repetition results
___________________________________________________________________
Yearly analytics on my spaced repetition results
Follow-up: https://www.natemeyvis.com/22-reasons-i-
did-301432-flashcard...
Author : Theaetetus
Score : 37 points
Date : 2026-01-02 15:10 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.natemeyvis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.natemeyvis.com)
| vunderba wrote:
| From the article:
|
| _> For example, I only record the correctness of a response, not
| its subjective difficulty, and I mix in random cards with my
| study sessions to make it harder for me to guess the answer on
| the basis of when I 'm seeing the card._
|
| Sounds a bit like the Leitner system [1] with respect to
| recording only Correct/Incorrect responses. One of the reasons I
| avoided Anki for a _long time_ was that I wanted to be able to
| answer cards quickly without actually looking at my phone. I
| ended up using a combination of automatic TTS, bluetooth
| headphones, and swipe-up /down gestures to indicate my response.
|
| Made it much easier to go through cards while driving or during
| daily runs with my husky.
|
| [1] - https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/study-revision/leitner-
| syst...
| yangikan wrote:
| Would love to know more -- what software do you use?
| smuenkel wrote:
| If you have the software for that in a repo somewhere, I'd be
| interested in seeing how you made that work as well.
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| I would love to hear more about your setup!
| rsanek wrote:
| Interesting to see the stats here. My total active library size
| is about the same as the author's (~50k cards), yet I performed
| less than 100k reviews this past year. That said, my overall
| retention is a good bit lower (~83%). Wouldn't have expected a 6%
| difference to make for a 3x higher review load!
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| What are your cards about? The author seems to be learning for
| the sake of learning.
| Theaetetus wrote:
| 1. My algorithm is probably inefficient, and a big Q1 2026 goal
| is to figure out where the inefficiencies are and (better) to
| get a better system for addressing and remediating them in an
| automated way.
|
| 2. A lot of my cards were also _made_ in 2025 (and 2024), so I
| 'm probably much farther to the left of you on the learning
| curve, on average.
| satisfice wrote:
| Does doing this have utility? What problem does it solve?
|
| Years ago, I memorized 1034 digits of pi just to see what it felt
| like (reciting pi from memory felt like walking through a forest
| at night without bumping into any trees). So, there was some
| value in that experience.
|
| I wonder what this guy gets out of it?
| santoshalper wrote:
| I think they just enjoy memorizing things. Roughly the
| equivalent of meeting someone who runs 10 miles a day. They
| enjoy it and it has some benefit to their life as well, even
| though they are probably far past the point of diminishing
| returns.
| rjh29 wrote:
| More precisely, enjoys memorizing things but isn't good at
| it. Professonal quizzers can absorb huge amounts of
| information but typically don't use flashcards. OP is
| grinding thousands of cards a day to get to the same level -
| worthy of respect!
| hebejebelus wrote:
| > but typically don't use flashcards
|
| Can you elaborate on this? I watch an unhealthy amount of
| University Challenge and I assumed that the vast majority
| of contestants would use flash cards as a trivia retention
| tool. Most people I've met who need to rely on large
| amounts of accurate but relatively dispersed knowledge (law
| students, say, or specific historical professions) use
| flash cards in one way or another. It surprises me greatly
| that 'professional quizzers' wouldn't. Perhaps _some_ of
| them wouldn't - I'm sure as with anything there are some
| who are preternaturally excellent.
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| I highly doubt professional or even amateur quizzers
| wouldn't use flashcards. Especially armed with a SRS
| algo, it would be the most efficient way to learn to
| _quickly_ recall the type of info needed for quiz bowls
| Theaetetus wrote:
| Fascinatingly (to me), some top quizzers (e.g., Yogesh
| Raut) do not use flashcards. Different strokes...
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Roger Craig famously used Anki and was one of the top
| jeopardy players for a while, and I believe he got some
| push back from the likes of Jennings and others who
| thought flash cards were cheap and the only right way to
| do trivia is "naturally", by just reading a bunch of
| random shit all the time.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Well, it stands to reason that people who don't need to
| do flashcards have a competitive advantage and are more
| likely to become professional quizzers. They might use
| flashcards in addition, but I get the sense most of them
| just absorb trivia like a sponge.
| Theaetetus wrote:
| Indeed! Thanks!
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Professonal quizzers can absorb huge amounts of
| information but typically don't use flashcards.
|
| Professional quizzers almost all use flashcards.
| _Jeopardy!_ people definitely do. The range of questions
| that you can ask in a general knowledge quiz are
| surprisingly limited. You 're not going beyond a surface-
| level overview on anything. Do a ton of general knowledge
| flashcards for a year and you'll annihilate people at pub
| quizzes.
|
| I suppose you could just read encyclopedias over and over
| again, and books of lists.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Ken Jennings doesn't! I am speculating though so I'll
| defer to your knowledge here. I was trying to say, for
| some people it comes naturally. I doubt the majority of
| quizzers are doing 300k reviews a year.
|
| Reminds me of that guy who "mastered the NYT Crossword"
| by flashcarding questions/clues. I also learned to do the
| Saturday consistently - just by doing the crossword every
| day for a while. You don't always need flashcards.
| basscomm wrote:
| His homepage says that he likes memorizing things. There is
| utility in doing something you enjoy for the sake of it.
| diimdeep wrote:
| Very cool, and have you actually used forest as memory palace ?
| this and chunking + imagery mapped to digits, is what got
| suggested to me just now by chatbot as technique that memory
| athletes use; got curious myself but never tried something like
| this.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Random example: In my last job I would point out JS language
| features that would have made my coworker's code more concise
| and canonical.
|
| I hadn't done any JS coding beyond a few examples from a
| tutorial.
|
| There's no way I would have retained that knowledge otherwise.
|
| There are _many_ such examples. In general it 's extremely
| useful for retaining things you are _not_ going to develop
| muscle memory for.
|
| "Memorizing by doing" is great if you're doing often. What if
| you're not?
| naet wrote:
| So you have cards for JavaScript features? What do they look
| like?
| BeetleB wrote:
| Basic stuff like syntax, macros of common functions etc.
| Theaetetus wrote:
| 1. I enjoy it.
|
| 2. I like trivia competitions.
|
| 3. I like making and using my own software.
|
| 4. Memorizing facts is an underrated way to become a better
| software engineer. Not the best way or even close to the best
| way, but an underrated way!
|
| 5. It enriches my experience of the world (I plan to write more
| about this soon).
| santoshalper wrote:
| I read the author's attempt to explain why memorization is
| important, and found myself unconvinced. Of all the things we
| consider to be "intelligence", memorization of facts seems like
| one of the least valuable in the Internet-era. That said, I am
| open to hear some counter-arguments (pro-memorization).
|
| Of course, if you simply enjoy the process of memorizing facts,
| then no explanation is needed - it is entertainment for you, and
| comes with a benefit, like enjoying exercising. Otherwise, it
| does not seem like a remotely optimally productive way to achieve
| mastery in any field I am aware of, other than being a student
| who will be tested on fact memorization.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Memorization focuses on the set of things you want to recall,
| but don't use often enough to naturally remember.
|
| This is most peritent for language learning because you need to
| 'bootstrap' a large set of words and grammar, and you can't use
| all of them often enough to put them in long-term memory (at
| first).
|
| Aside from foreign languages, I also use flashcards for English
| - more difficult words that show up rarely enough that I can't
| remember their definitions - and country flags.
|
| For general learning too, if you need to keep looking something
| up over and over but can't seem to remember it, flashcards will
| bootstrap that into your brain and make future learning
| smoother. Obviously Internet/AI can help - but LLMs can't
| explain 100% of a topic in their reply, they always assume some
| level of abstraction, and the higher-level it is the faster you
| can absorb a topic.
| _JoRo wrote:
| I think the key part here is the bootstrapping phase. You may
| not use a specific English word every week, but maybe you use
| it every 2-3 months. SRS is great for getting information to
| these different thresholds!
| Theaetetus wrote:
| See my other comments here for some of my motivations, but
| also:
|
| Even in the Internet age, getting the latency from "fast" to
| "effectively zero" has a lot of value for staying in flow,
| synethesizing information, etc. Your memory is the ultra-low-
| latency fact retrieval system you always have. No, you
| definitely don't want to use it for everything, but it
| definitely does _complement_ modern tools in important ways.
| webdevver wrote:
| would be really funny if this was actually someone preparing for
| who wants to be a millionaire
| davio wrote:
| That was my first thought - "Is this guy training for
| Jeopardy?"
| elil17 wrote:
| He does link to someone who does 3k flashcards per day to
| prep for Jeopardy.
| NoSalt wrote:
| Are these physical flashcards or virtual, some sort of flashcard
| software? Definitely writing out 301,432 physical flashcards
| would be a lot of work, not to mention [kinda] a waste of paper,
| however many people still like the physical over the virtual;
| this is me when it comes to reading books.
| namrog84 wrote:
| Bullets 2,3, and 4
|
| * I'm using my own software
|
| * I did 301,432 flashcard reviews in 2025.
|
| * Those reviews covered 52,764 distinct cards.
| elil17 wrote:
| As someone who did about 51k in 2025, oh my goodness how would
| you possibly have time for 300k?
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| I did 10k reviews. Admittedly, very streakily - so spurts
| intense study for 2-3 months than several months off - I think
| about 2.5 spurts total. I felt pretty wrung out after. 51k is a
| ton, congrats!
| Theaetetus wrote:
| 1. I have a long commute, and I have about 45 minutes of
| walking per day, during which I like to do my reviews. 2. I've
| put serious effort into reducing the friction in my software in
| order to reduce time per review. 3. You've got to do
| _something_ when you 're on the toilet, right?
| MattRix wrote:
| When you review while walking are you just looking at your
| phone? I'm wondering if there's some less obtrusive way it
| could be done, like via smartwatch or even 100% by audio or
| something.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > My correct-answer rate is approximately 89%
|
| That sounds like incredibly boring way to spend time. I'd aim for
| something like 20% at most. What's the fun in being asked things
| you already know?
| BeetleB wrote:
| The point of spaced repetition is to have you recall something
| right when you're just about to forget it. If you recall after
| it's been forgotten, that means you're forgetting a lot more,
| which means the system isn't working.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Then the point is boring and tedious.
|
| You should be forgetting a lot in your life and learn a lot.
| Remembering is overrated. Learning the same thing second or
| third time gives you better understanding.
| reedlaw wrote:
| That sounds nearly perfect for FSRS [1], the default spaced
| repetition algorithm used by Anki, which aims at estimating the
| time it takes for memory stability to decline from 100% to 90%.
| At the estimated 90% stability point, FSRS would require a
| review, so naturally a mature deck of flashcards would hover
| between 90-100% stability.
|
| 1. https://expertium.github.io/Algorithm.html
| Theaetetus wrote:
| This is a really good question!
|
| 1. As others have said, the idea is to study something _before_
| you forget.
|
| 2. It's hard to predict when you're going to forget something,
| so you do wind up studying a bunch of stuff before you really
| have to. It's a limitation of prediction (and also of the
| technology as developed so far).
|
| 3. It really is pleasant to work to recall things even when you
| succeed at it. It does "freshen them up" in your memory. And
| sometimes just the experience of seeing a fact can be pleasant.
| (A lot of us review familiar things for the joy of it in other
| domains--movies, etc.)
| scotty79 wrote:
| I guess I can see how someone might be enjoying this.
| Especially folks who are into excercise of any kind. But it's
| not for me. I think there's value in forgetting and re-
| learning as needed.
|
| I learned A* at least 5 times already. And each time I learn
| it, I feel like I'm having better appreciation and
| understanding of how it works. Each time I'm falling in
| different traps, make different mistakes, that teach me more.
| I wouldn't have that insight if I just memorized how to
| correctly implement it the first time and recalled it
| whenever I needed a new implementation. Also I'm perfectly
| happy not knowing how to implement A* in between times that I
| need it.
|
| I would like to be reminded that things exist, after I forgot
| them, so 20% sounds way more fun for me.
|
| Anyways, thanks for sharing your fun. Don't let me be a
| buzzkill. ;-)
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| There are some days when I feel I don't know this community at
| all. :-)
|
| Do this many people use flashcards? Maybe I'm way too old.
| Probably.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > The prompt of my most-missed card (39 misses in 2025) is:
| Merrily We Roll Along (the musical) is based on a 1934 play by
| what two people
|
| > [...] But, ChatGPT and Gemini both tell me that these effects
| are not statistically significant, despite having pretty large
| sample sizes.
|
| Imagine he instead learned how to calculate staristical
| significance instead so he didn't have to believe AI guesswork.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| Yes, different strokes I guess but I can't imagine just using
| flashcards for random information. And you'd think someone who
| wrote(maybe vibe coded?) a flashcard program would be calculate
| that by hand.
| Theaetetus wrote:
| Yes, I can calculate that! I was a math major and have some
| basic literacy. I checked the LLMs' work. That said, I only
| did so with medium rigor, and I wanted to flag that I was
| speaking as someone who was assisted by AI, not someone who
| had done the process by hand.
| Artgor wrote:
| I sympathise. I did ~200k reviews in Anki and no idea how many in
| Renshuu in 2025 for language learning: German, Spanish and
| Japanese... and I think I got into Anki hell. For a long time,
| Anki was really useful for me, it pushed my Spanish and German
| forward, but now I plan to decrease the number of reviews
| significantly. I hope to spend no more than 30 minutes per day of
| flashcards, and the rest of time on immersion.
| aaronrobinson wrote:
| How do you decide what to immerse yourself in? Do you just
| search for things independently or do you have a way of
| selecting content based on your level?
| Artgor wrote:
| I prefer to start immersion at ~B1 level. I know some people
| want to do comprehensive input right from the start, but I
| prefer to build foundations. I start with popular books that
| I have already read before - The Little Prince, Harry Potter,
| etc. Then I take books that are interesting for me and work
| through them. There are graded readers, but the stories are
| usually very boring. I prefer to read what I like.
| simedw wrote:
| First of all, big kudos for not missing a single day. When I used
| flashcards in the past, missing even a couple of days led to an
| avalanche of cards to review.
|
| Since you've been so consistent and are using your own software,
| have you experimented with different resurfacing rates? Did you
| notice a material difference in recall?
| Theaetetus wrote:
| I have done a lot of algorithmic experiments. I wouldn't say I
| _noticed_ a big difference in recall, but my graphs say that
| there definitely _is_ one!
| Nerada wrote:
| Is there a reason you chose to roll your own software instead
| of just using Anki? Custom algorithm you think is better than
| FSRS? UI preferences?
| yodsanklai wrote:
| They barely mention why they're even doing this. I see flashcard
| as a means to something (e.g. learning a language, preparing for
| a test...). The measured outcome should be the success in task,
| rather than the number of reviewed cards.
| yesitcan wrote:
| Yeah, can anyone else that does this explain what the point is?
| Genuinely curious.
| Theaetetus wrote:
| 1. I have always loved learning things, both big and small.
| 2. I enjoy trivia competitions. 3. I'm interested in human
| memory more generally. 4. I think that spaced repetition
| software could be a lot better, and I'm trying to make such
| software. So when I study, I'm also getting the value of
| using and improving my own software.
| viccis wrote:
| Reminds me of when I was looking for good workflows for note
| taking tools like Obsidian that would be relevant to me, but so
| many of the big articles on how to do various types of note
| organizations strategies all used theirs to organize notes on
| videos and conferences they had watched or gone to about note
| taking.
| aydin212 wrote:
| 301k reviews/year is serious commitment. Curious -- do you ever
| prune low-value cards, or is the goal to never delete anything?
| Theaetetus wrote:
| I prune some, but less than I probably should, and less than
| most other serious SR people do. I'm more interested in
| techniques for (i) raising the quality of even my lower-value
| cards and (ii) figuring out how to actually learn the stuff
| that people think of as "leeches."
| williamsss wrote:
| I would have liked to see statistics on study session length eg.
| average duration. Also how long you typically spend creating per
| card and how many you created this year.
|
| That information would help us all better assess whether the time
| spent on a spaced repetition flashcard system is justified
| jjice wrote:
| How do you decide what gets a card? I see you like trivia and
| such, but what triggers you to turn a trivia sounding fact into a
| flash card?
| Theaetetus wrote:
| At this point there's just a reflex I have that says "ah, I'd
| like to remember that." It's the same feeling whether I'm
| learning something for trivia, for work, or for personal
| reasons.
| Theaetetus wrote:
| Thanks to everyone for all the useful notes and questions here.
| I've compiled a follow-up post here:
|
| https://www.natemeyvis.com/22-reasons-i-did-301432-flashcard...
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've put that link in the toptext as well.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-01-05 23:00 UTC)