Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)

https://www.efavdb.com/memory%20recall

by rzk • 1 year ago

204 203 1 year ago

rini172• 1 year ago

Fine but what to use in practice. Tried Anki and found its algorithm bit infuriating. SuperMemo is better but thoroughly proprietary.

_Algernon_2• 1 year ago

Have you tried Anki since FSRS was introduced? If not, may be worth giving it another shot.

victor106• 1 year ago

Sorry what is FSRS? And when was it released?

rini172• 1 year ago

Did not know they added it, thanks for the info.

watwut4• 1 year ago

I 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.

DontchaKnowit• 1 year ago

Whats wrong with Anki? Works like a charm for me

ukoki• 1 year ago

When 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)

* 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.

Agingcoder2• 1 year ago

I 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_n2• 1 year ago

If you’re looking for a vocabulary tool, I just released an app for this: https://deft.so. It uses FSRS, which I’ve found to be perfect for me.

treetalker• 1 year ago

You might like Mochi for macOS and iOS.

www.mochi.cards

dutchbookmaker2• 1 year ago

That 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.

Etheryte2• 1 year ago

This 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• 1 year ago

There 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• 1 year ago

This 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• 1 year ago

It'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• 1 year ago

Spaced 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• 1 year ago

Most 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.

StefanBatory2• 1 year ago

In 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.

orzig• 1 year ago

I 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.

hiAndrewQuinn4• 1 year ago

A 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.

cratermoon2• 1 year 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.

szundi2• 1 year ago

What 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.

bluGill3• 1 year ago

You can't know it all so choose what is important to know and what you look up.

implmntatio• 1 year ago

it doesn't have to become part of your thinking and reasoning, even in context, even though it does carry some actual weight. because it can be (over)shadowed. something that some people currently learn to code into LLMs, if I understood layering and quantization more or less superficially correct.

so, you might want to google it, because some part in the back of your head itches to remember something that is actually relevant and located on the rim (of the knowledge graph) of something that you do remember.

fucked up indexing. an 8 hour rabbit hole and that one of 43 links you didn't open in a new tab.

lm28469• 1 year ago

What you remember becomes part of your thinking and reasoning

I find it also true for books, you unconsciously internalize things by reading the full book VS reading a summary. I sometimes reread books I read 10+ years ago and I often have these "ah so that's where I got this idea from". Most of the time it isn't even about the main point of the book, it can be a sentence or a dialogue that left an imprint on your psyche

I'd hate to be a simple proxy between google/llms and the real world

yapyap2• 1 year ago

LLMs memorize information at a superhuman level the same way an 8 tb harddisk does.

Silly.

iwsk• 1 year ago

Actually it's way easier to search for the information in an LLM compared to an 8 tb harddisk.

The search is vague, and the result is nondeterministic, but in a lot of cases it's still the better method.

https://fchollet.substack.com/i/137628402/llms-as-program-da... I like the way this article puts it. "LLM is a continuous, interpolative kind of database"

hombre_fatal3• 1 year ago

It seems pretty easy to illuminate this question once you consider concrete examples.

For example, neither google nor an LLM replaces the utility of building your own vocabulary so that you can express yourself in a foreign language when you're in convo with someone.

sunnybeetroot2• 1 year ago

If the goal is for you to be understood in a foreign language, this will become possible in the near future with real time translation with something as simple as an AirPod. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WzUnEfiIqP4

TwoNineFive• 1 year ago

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.

I imagine spaced repetition is not actually a cause of repeating yourself. That's just caused by being too lazy to proofread before you post.

veqq• 1 year ago

In the same way that notation is a tool of thought [1] actually knowing facts paves routes[2] of possibility and impossibility (instead of pausing everything to research or drowning in too many paths).

It's akin to seeing 37*55 and knowing it won't be a 20 digit number, greatly reducing your search space. Imagine feeding someone without knowing what they like (how do you choose something?) vs. "allergic to dairy"?

[1] https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm [2] https://alexalejandre.com/programming/forge-deeper-thought/

bloomingkales• 1 year ago

The 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.

rahimnathwani2• 1 year ago

Not 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_allison14• 1 year 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/dunloskyimprovi... [PDF]

yamrzou2• 1 year ago

Besides LineByLine (https://linebyline.app), does anyone have tips on memorizing long texts using spaced repetition?

mcshicks• 1 year ago

I 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.

rahimnathwani2• 1 year ago

I 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

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_du2• 1 year ago

No 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• 1 year ago

I'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_allison14• 1 year ago

SuperMemo 19 (2024 - Desktop/Windows) has incremental reading support

https://super-memory.com/help/read.htm

Disclaimer: AnkiDroid maintainer

nilsherzig• 1 year ago

Thank you so much for your work on Anki Droid, I use it daily

L_i_m_n2• 1 year ago

FSRS 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.

runarberg12• 1 year ago

I used the same binding for a kanji learning 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.

wahnfrieden6• 1 year ago

Can’t read Anki source unless your work is GPL. Could you share the insights yourself?

david_allison14• 1 year ago

On the Anki side: if you document it, I'll answer questions.

joshdavham3• 1 year ago

I had some problems with their documentation though.

I agree that our documentation is pretty bad at the moment haha. But I'm hoping we'll start cleaning things up more this year. I'd also like to potentially move away from using github's wiki system...

jamager5• 1 year ago

I found FSRS is not great for languages because it optimized for the wrong thing, ie. how likely you will recall a word after X days without encountering that word.

There are 2 big problems:

1. If you are studying seriously, you will encounter many words outside your SRS practice, so the FSRS prediction fails flat.

2. More importantly, language learning is not about recalling words.

The algorithm I use for my app has a different set of objectives, it's <30 lines of straightforward code, and it works better (I tested it for months to be sure about it)

I'll open source it soon

gwern• 1 year ago

Wozniak 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_bra...

triyambakam• 1 year ago

Wow, never heard of SuperMemo and this Wozniak. What an interesting and awesome rabbit hole

epsilon-delta• 1 year ago

I 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_allison14• 1 year ago

The 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.

itronitron• 1 year ago

As a colleague of mine used to phrase it, "yeah, I could learn that new thing but then I'd have to give up an episode of Gilligan's Island" ...

road_to_freedom• 1 year ago

But this estimate is for "free learning"?

adham-omran• 1 year ago

Wozniak is incredible, it saddens me that SuperMemo will probably drift into obscurity due to being closed source and the chances of seeing its source code drift away day by day, it took a few years to get anything beyond IE support after that died.

I wish to see a FOSS incremental reading application in the very least, such an underrated concept.

david_allison14• 1 year ago

I wish to see a FOSS incremental reading application in the very least, such an underrated concept.

Be the change you wish to see in the world

turbojet1321• 1 year ago

I wish to see a FOSS incremental reading application in the very least, such an underrated concept.

There's an Anki plugin[0] though I know almost nothing about Anki or incremental reading, so I have no idea who good it is.

0:https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/999215520

ehnto• 1 year ago

There is some progress in open source implementations. Anki originally used a SuperMemo-2 implementation, it now uses the improved FSRS algorithm. There is also an incremental reading addon.

It's a fairly opinionated space, which is surprising since there is good data. But regardless, SuperMemo, FSRS, both work, you will make progress with either. People can just pick either and get started.

https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/free-spaced-repeti...

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/935264945

yanis_t2• 1 year ago

I 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/

szundi2• 1 year ago

Seems 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• 1 year ago

Just so the original poster knows, this also happens on Android running Microsoft Edge.

dnadler• 1 year ago

Oof, 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_t2• 1 year ago

Thanks 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_du2• 1 year ago

Logseq does it already and is well-established. Probably other solutions like Obsidian can do the same. It's a tough market to be in.

OskarS2• 1 year ago

I 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• 1 year ago

I'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• 1 year 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.

Etheryte2• 1 year ago

Learning 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.

watwut4• 1 year ago

Actually consuming content in any form is even better.

colin_jack8• 1 year ago

Aristotle, Leibniz, Einstein or whatever brilliant person you can think of didn't become who they are using cue-cards.

Indeed, but I think that being relevant assumes that people using these techniques believe it will somehow make them brilliant/geniuses.

Spaced repetition always seemed like those schemes to get you fit or slim in 30 days that never work.

I'm not arguing for spaced repetition, but the whole point is you do some amount every day (or as needed) for the rest of your life (within reason). So it's not equivalent to get fit/slim quick at all, it's more about disciplined improvement of yourself. If that isn't effective for you don't do it, but based on your comment it seems like you're coming at it from the wrong angle.

OskarS2• 1 year ago

I'm not arguing for spaced repetition, but the whole point is you do some amount every day (or as needed) for the rest of your life (within reason). So it's not equivalent to get fit/slim quick at all, it's more about disciplined improvement of yourself. If that isn't effective for you don't do it, but based on your comment it seems like you're coming at it from the wrong angle.

Fair enough, I haven't looked into spaced repetition deeply.

I just always got this weird vibe from people talking about it, like they think memorizing all the world capitals was a way to improve your intelligence. It's not.

Same thing with, like, "memory palace" stuff: being able to memorize a deck of cards is probably fun, and it's a nice parlor trick, but it will not help you solve real-world problems, analyze situations, make discoveries or be a better engineer. The way to do that is to just read books, study, work hard in your chosen field and keep up with the latest developments. That is the only way anyone has ever gotten good at anything.

Profan2• 1 year ago

How do you think that "working hard" bit works and produces results?

Repetition!

If you're learning a language and trying to learn vocabulary, a new alphabet, etc, anything that involves lots of recall being necessary, spaced repetition is an excellent aid because without the basic shit you can't do any of the rest.

Plus it's supposed to be consistent over a (very long) time, not a "quick fix" so it's actually really the opposite of the "get slim quick" type schemes.

It's probably not especially useful when you're not cramming stuff/trying to build up a base to stand on, which lets you actually get on with the actual meat of the learning.

culebron213• 1 year ago

Memory is associative. So if you study a topic from different approaches or read other tangential material, that has connections to the topic, you remember it a lot better, thanks to associations.

Repetition techniques simply ignore associations.

Learning new vocabulary works up until 200-300 words, then it's useless.

2c2c2c2• 1 year ago

it's a pretty narrow set of people that want or need to be able to memorize and recall a bunch of facts as efficiently as possible. mostly med school students and language learners, where this stuff obviously works.

colin_jack8• 1 year ago

Working in a fast changing but also wide and deep field like software I think being able to remember quite a few facts can be important.

yapyap2• 1 year ago

That is spaced repition, just with a bit of change in what they’re repeating

crazygringo• 1 year ago

You're right that nobody became brilliant through spaced repetition. But spaced repetition is not meant for that.

Spaced repetition is not meant for conceptual things or skills. It's meant for only the simplest of facts.

It's meant particularly for foreign language vocab, names and quantities in medical school, names of cases in law school, that sort of thing.

It has little to no relevance in math, physics, and engineering.

Just because it's not meant for all things doesn't mean it doesn't excel at some things.

colin_jack8• 1 year ago

Spaced repetition is not meant for conceptual things or skills. It's meant for facts.
It has little to no relevance in math, physics, and engineering.

That's one bit I disagree with. Engineering is full of facts/concepts, things you often need to know inherently to be able to apply them, or even to know to google them at the right time. So I think SRS can apply there too.

sureglymop2• 1 year ago

I disagree also. I have lots of formulae, proofs and more as mathjax in my Anki cards.

You'd be surprised how big of a help this actually is for college exams. Not only for cramming before exams but also to retain the facts after for follow up classes (I see other students constantly struggle with having to relearn whole subjects while I don't because Anki implicitly makes me relearn them every week).

michaelcampbell3• 1 year ago

It has little to no relevance in math, physics, and engineering.

This is more a lack of imagination on your part than necessarily an issue with SRS.

elicksaur• 1 year ago

Are you sure this class of people don’t implicitly do spaces repetition via:

- “reading books” (coming across the same ideas in different books, tying new ideas to old books)

- “discuss and debate” (remembering and being reminded of previously learned things)

- “study their subjects” (?) (presumably restating the previous two? - Maybe original research, which is finding new facts or reinforcing old ones)

- “work hard” (??)

I also wonder if there’s something about the mental process of people who seem to “just get it” - is their mind subconsciously turning over stuff they’ve learned in the same way an external spaced repetition regimen would? They may be getting the benefit of spaced repetition, but from the outside it doesn’t look like they follow a study plan.

wcfrobert• 1 year ago

I mostly agree with you, I don't do SR myself, but I do think the benefit of spaced repetition is solid for medical students/researchers and language learners.

Also some people just find it fun to go through their Anki deck instead of doomscrolling while on the subway or waiting in line. Whether there's any real benefit for that person is debatable. It's “fun“ in the same way going to the gym, or drinking kale smoothie is fun.

The key for improvement is deliberate practice, and one component of that is "working really hard" which you've pointed. But this is still too vague to be helpful. For those interested in the science of expertise, I highly recommend Peak by Andres Ericsson.

colin_jack8• 1 year ago

Also some people just find it fun to go through their Anki deck instead of doomscrolling while on the subway or waiting in line. Whether there's any real benefit for that person is debatable. It's “fun“ in the same way going to the gym, or drinking kale smoothie is fun.

I'm probably one of those people, but commuting is one of those examples where you have a small (hopefully) amount of relatively low value time, time that is somewhat interrupted. What else of value would you do in it? Maybe listen to a podcast, catch up on blogs. All fine, reasonable choices, but doing a bit of Anki is a reasonable alternative.

Only time I feel like I've wasted those periods is when I end up wasting it (just scrolling through social media or random videos). Anything else is I think a reasonable choice.

keiferski7• 1 year ago

Spaced repetition is merely an optimal way of organizing repetition. All of the “brilliant” people you’ve met almost certainly study their topics constantly, and this daily exposure is itself a form of repetition.

This misconception is a common mistake by people that think Anki / SRS are equivalent to the spacing effect itself. That is not the case. The spacing effects exists independently of any particular software implementation.

I don’t think any one claims that memorizing a bunch of facts will make you a genius; rather that if you are aiming for optimal learning and memory, SRS is pretty much the gold standard and is backed up by tons of scientific research.

golly_ned• 1 year ago

For those of us who aren’t brilliant, but want to learn well anyway, Anki’s (my preferred SRS) is a godsend when used in the right domains — foreign language vocabulary is the best example.

I don’t see spaced repetition as one of those get-fit-fast schemes. I see it as going to the gym as opposed to generally living an active lifestyle. Some gifted people can get very, very fit without going to the gym, just by playing sports and other physical activities. Gym isn’t that fun compared to playing soccer, and it takes a lot of time and consistency to be worth it.

Alex-Programs2• 1 year ago

That's an excellent way to put it. Personally, it allowed me to get excellent grades despite my post-concussion syndrome. It's miserable, but optimising your learning can really let you punch above your weight.

Also, you can fit Anki into parts of your day where "proper" learning is more difficult. I used to do it on the bus to and from school, where it was far to loud - and I was often too tired - to learn through other means.

The alternative was scrolling through HN... I did that a lot, too.

mirrorlake• 1 year ago

"There are no shortcuts, you have to put in the work." Spoken like someone who doesn't use an SRS system, then. They're actually extremely hard to use, because the focus is on feeding you the toughest possible version of every recalled card. Part of why people quit using them is because it's mentally exhausting!

shermantanktop• 1 year ago

Aristotle, Leibniz, Einstein or whatever brilliant person you can think of didn't become who they are using cue-cards.

You aren’t Einstein, I presume. Neither am I. So first of all, you can’t say that with any certainty.

But more importantly, the vanishingly small top end of the bell curve does not hold useful lessons for the rest of us. Things that mere mortals have to expend effort on are not even a second thought for them, so they have nothing to teach someone who is working to learn things they never even tried to learn.

This is why great coaches are usually middling athletes. This is why great teachers are rarely great in the field they teach. This is why lessons from those who are great are often frustrating and filled with statements like “just…you know…do X.”

dutchbookmaker2• 1 year ago

It would be better to have a photographic memory and not need to repeat anything.

You are 100% right but have absolutely no point.

mystified50162• 1 year ago

As someone actually on this end of the spectrum, I agree with you. The thing that I feel makes my brain and my methodology special is that I can make a single pass through a body of work and internalize just enough of the information.

This then ends up as something analogous to a table of weak pointers. I keep a sort of abstract digest of the information in the mental database and I use it to go look up hardcopy when it becomes necessary to actually reference.

The result is something akin to a vector database. I can look at a problem and apply many different approaches simultaneously. The mental machinery autonomously eliminates the worst paths through my knowledge graph and I'm left with a few pretty good options.

Actually memorizing all the information my mental database links to would be explicitly detrimental to the process. This pushes the signal/noise ratio way too low, and more importantly wastes time I could spend indexing a larger amount of information.

Perfect recall just isn't necessary for the way I solve problems. Reference books exist for a reason. every machinist ever has a copy of the machinist's handbook for a very good reason.

The process is all about knowing what is possible and drawing paths through the graph of possibilities. The details aren't relevant until the implementation stage when you'd be accessing reference materials anyway.

I find that spaced repetition does increase recall. I don't think that's in dispute. But better recall does not make you a better engineer. I don't think it's something even worthwhile in the general case, unless you're specifically trying to build a deep specialization.

People in general really dislike this notion. People want to believe that hard work and dedication makes an Einstein. The idea that it's just how some brains are is, I dunno, unfair?

But it's a tradeoff. There's a huge psychological burden involved. I won't get into it, but it's something Einstein spoke about. I'm also no use on my own. My abilities have led me to specialize deeply in generalism; I have no real specialization in any one field. If I had to operate on my own, it'd take me ten times longer than with a couple of specialists behind me. But with a good team, the amount of work we can put out is scary.

No, not everyone can learn to think and operate this way, sorry. My brain is wired different and you probably don't want it, it really, truly sucks. But that's a good thing. A healthy mixture of perspectives and abilities is what makes a successful team/company/project. You can't really get by with just a generalist or just a specialist. You need both perspectives.

oa335• 1 year ago

The process is all about knowing what is possible and drawing paths through the graph of possibilities. The details aren't relevant until the implementation stage when you'd be accessing reference materials anyway.

Well put. But in that case, couldn’t you utilize SRS to memorizing high level concepts (e.g., coarse characteristics of various algorithms as opposed to how they are actually implemented, etc)

david_allison14• 1 year ago

Off the top of my head: John Carmack and Derek Sivers are Anki users.

I've met a ton of brilliant people at Olympiads who use Anki, and you'll find heavy usage from people who rank #1 in highly competitive exams (JEE Advanced, Cambridge Medicine etc...). I graduated top of my class, and I attribute this to consistent Anki usage

But, of course: there's a subset of truly incredible people who don't need it. I've met some people at 20+ languages, no Anki

----

Disclaimer: AnkiDroid maintainer. Did a bit of work on a new website today, so stats are top of mind.

exhilaration• 1 year ago

My understanding is that Anki is pretty much used by every single medical student, at least in the U.S. It's the perfect applications for retaining massive amounts of information just long enough to pass med school and board exams. Look at this: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/ -- 166k followers.

culebron213• 1 year ago

Fully agree.

Commenters who argue with you, suggesting that discussion is repetition, miss one thing: associativity of memory.

Discussing material, reading something tangential or in another aspect of the subject, all that makes more associations, not just simply repeat the same fact.

I had tried that 20 years ago learning a new language: after ~300 words, my brain could recall every word in the cards, but not in real text. At some point I looked a word in a dictionary, then vaguely remembered that I had looked it up earlier. And a minute later recalled that I had a similar word in the cards -- I browsed through them and found it, and guess what, repeating by the cards, I named it very easily (I guess, brain learns any cues, like cursive writing features, and cuts every corner). But this knowledge never transferred to the real language practice (at the time I was starting to write and say something sensible).

I remember taking driving exam, the theoretical test. You're given 20 questions with pictures and a question whether or not you can do a particular maneuver. Some groupmates just rote-repeated the entire 800-question set of last year's test multiple times (and learned the pictures rather than their meaning).

I instead did the homework: analyzed the entire rulebook, and where rules were irregular and chaotic, organized them in tables to bring any kind of system to this. And then I had no troubles remembering those single rules. Also, I made myself a checklist for the picture questions, what to look at -- are there lights (which have priority over signs), is there a tram (has priority, and changes passing order), and so on.

The pictures in the real test were re-drawn in different style, and sure some folks couldn't load the right answer from their brain and failed the test. One of them told me "You're so smart" (probably implying that I simply have much more RAM in the brain, which isn't true). That was pleasure to ears, but I didn't try memorizing the material at all, and knew very little of it beforehand.

purplethinking3• 1 year ago

I'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.

keiferski7• 1 year ago

Strongly 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_fatal3• 1 year ago

If 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.

runarberg12• 1 year ago

I think the mistake here is simply to many new cards a day. If you miss a week and have 863 reps, you definitely are going way too fast. You shouldn’t have to spend more than 5-20 minutes daily going over your review, and if you miss a week you shouldn’t need more than two or three half hour sessions to catch up.

I think there are diminishing returns as well by having to many daily new cards, as there is only so much you can commit into memory every day. So you will probably end up having terrible recall as well (which further adds to your reps).

I’m using Anki to learn Japanese. I actually go a step further in taking it slow as I’m still on my N5 vocab (first 1000 words) after 9 months of learning. I think it will be another 9 months before I can read stuff I‘m interested in in Japanese (which will probably be Go books).

purplethinking3• 1 year ago

I used it for language learning and CS among other things. The thing is, life gets busy. Suddenly you have a kid or two. Spaced Repetition falls into the same category of things that people in their 20s do because they have too much time, like using intricate note taking systems, journaling, training for triathlons and being really into artisanal coffee.

jamager5• 1 year ago

Spaced repetition is the cherry on the cake: learn by practicing, but create your own cards along the way, and when reviewing just focus on making a recall effort, not nailing everything.

For language, 10-20 mins / day is great, and if you are putting enough effort, 6-8 reps is enough to learn a card with 2 new concepts at ~15secs / rep, which really makes a difference long term.

I made a tool[1] with that approach in mind and tailor-made for language acquisition patterns. The key part is that creating cards (audio included) must be super-easy and fast, but they need to come from you nevertheless.

[1] https://thehardway.app

sunnybeetroot2• 1 year ago

Wow this looks great! Reminds me a bit of Mochi.cards

dotancohen• 1 year ago

This looks very interesting. The language dialect that I am learning now has no online sources, but many words are similar to other dialects that are online. How does the app find the native pronunciations of words? What can we do with the voice notes, other than just listening to them? Transcription?

zozbot234• 1 year ago

once you miss a week and suddenly you have 863 reps to get through to catch up.

You only have to "catch up" ASAP if you want to minimize the risk of forgetting any card at all, and then having to memorize it again. Otherwise, just working through the backlog at your preferred pace is the best strategy; you'll still be recalling most of the cards and the system will push repetitions for those that you do recall further out in time.

Perhaps the Anki devs should add some kind of special workflow in the UX that shows up when the user has a huge backlog to go through due to missed reviews, and tells them this. Because you're right that just seeing a bare number (863 cards to go through!) can be quite scary.

yamrzou2• 1 year ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

runarberg12• 1 year ago

I wrote a kanji learning app around Anki’s Flexable Spaced Repetition (FSRS) algorithm 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.

csdvrx2• 1 year 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.

runarberg12• 1 year ago

Thanks for the suggestion. The code is open sourced at 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.

david_allison14• 1 year ago

Anki’s Flexable Spaced Repetition (FSRS)

Sorry to nitpick: Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler

https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/

socksy• 1 year ago

Random bit of UX feedback. When on https://shodoku.app/decks/add the + symbol means to add the deck, but in the interface even knowing that I accidentally pressed it 3 or 4 times to try and fold back the kanji after having clicked "show".

runarberg12• 1 year ago

Thanks for the feedback. I am a UX engineer and frankly I‘m a little embarrassed I was caught employing such a bad UX pattern.

Even without the confusion of toggling a hidden detail, the or-or-off toggle button is known to be bad UX as it is unclear whether the toggler is on or off, unless clarified with a label. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39342649

My next feature is going to be custom decks, which is implemented on this page. I will for sure fix this (by adding labels, and changing the icon to a checkmark for active decks).

Thanks again, this was helpful.

dang• 1 year ago

Discussed at the time:

Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32381206 - Aug 2022 (169 comments)

aerhardt2• 1 year ago

Anyone had any experience using spaced repetition for reinforcing math learning?

runarberg12• 1 year ago

I 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• 1 year ago

Checkout 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• 1 year ago

Same 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

aerhardt2• 1 year ago

I'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• 1 year ago

I haven't worked through it, but Michael Nielsen has a great article about this: https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics.

hiAndrewQuinn4• 1 year ago

I 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• 1 year ago

I 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

david_allison14• 1 year ago

We'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)

wahnfrieden6• 1 year ago

I 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

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• 1 year ago

Hilbert's memory palace.

xhevahir• 1 year ago

Am 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.

Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)

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