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root comments on A Second Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom - Less Wrong Discussion

29 Post author: tanagrabeast 01 May 2016 10:14PM

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Tags: anki learning spaced_repetition education srs

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Comment author: root 04 May 2016 02:55:18PM 0 points [-]

I'm aware I'm being off-topic, but have you ever thought about alternative methods of memorization?

Here's two examples, and they have an important thing in common: the answer is visible.

  1. Non-trivia questions: Just like trivia shows, except that they're focused on a narrow subject.

Practical example: Which of the following is [xyz]? [A] [B] [C] [D]

  1. Fill in the blank and a 'answers paper'. You need to fill in the correct answer from one of the answers provided in a separate paper.

Question XYZ: ____ Answer1 Answer2 Answer3 .... AnswerN

I've designed those on the basis of me having a strong nonconsious memory, but haveing difficulty with active recall. But I feel much more confident in my answers when I can remember them like that. Your own milleage may vary.

I'm also interested in some criticism of SRS, because every time I see something 'good' I also want to see how many holes can be poked in it. The wiki gave me some sort of 'this is amazingly awesome' and I'm just curious, how true is that? For example, if we have x number of cards in a typical deck, can we grade the usefulness of each card? It can get rather personal here but sometimes I have a conflict between perfectionism and practicalism, in which perfectionism says 'You could completely screw up by missing those details' and practicalism says 'How important is it that you know?', and I'm curious if I'm the only one who feels this way.

Comment author: ChristianKl 04 May 2016 03:17:37PM 1 point [-]

Practical example: Which of the following is [xyz]? [A] [B] [C] [D]

I did made hundreds of Anki cards on that basis with 2 to 3 answers and my conclusion is that it's a bad idea. Given "what fires together wires together" cards like that seem to create links between the question and the wrong answers.

For example, if we have x number of cards in a typical deck, can we grade the usefulness of each card?

The typical deck is going to be different for different people.

Comment author: tanagrabeast 05 May 2016 02:05:30AM 1 point [-]

I did made hundreds of Anki cards on that basis with 2 to 3 answers and my conclusion is that it's a bad idea. Given "what fires together wires together" cards like that seem to create links between the question and the wrong answers.

There's also a risk that you become dependent on being able to look for the answer visually rather than being able to fish it out of year head; in most real-world cases, it's the latter skill you need.

Comment author: ChristianKl 05 May 2016 05:19:58PM 0 points [-]

Yes, depending on how you need the knowledge that's an issue. But it's an issue that I would expect most smart people to be conscious of when they make the decision to make cards like this.

The effect I mentioned isn't easily anticipated and it took me a lot of empirical study to find that it's there.

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