Figures my first comment would be about this topic as I am currently planning to write a book on how to use SRS to increase learning efficiency (directed at college students)
I have some questions about your use of Anki to learn mathematics because I started using Anki when I was studying Physics and was never able to use it successfully for the purpose of learning math-heavy subjects:
1 - You say that you use Anki so that it is easier to read a textbook so I was wondering whether you think Anki has helped you retain that knowledge in the long term or whether you use it solely while you are going through the textbook
2 - Do you keep your cards in separate decks even after finishing the textbook? I'm of the opinion that a single deck for long-term cards is better for interleaved practice benefits, but one of the problems of math-heavy cards is that they are so context dependent that the interference between cards ends up destroying recall performance so I wanted get your input on how you handle that
3 - Not really a question, but can you upload the Sequence deck anywhere? Can't find it online anymore.
I liked when you said that you add some cards to help break pattern matching, it is also one of the things I've noticed as I've used Anki over the years. I like to think of redundancy as a core concept when thinking about card creation in the sense that some non-trivial things should be added over different cards in differing formulations so that your recall of that piece of knowledge isn't tied to some pattern that isn't available when you're not doing card review.
A first deck is shared on http://milchior.fr/Anki/ I may want to edit it more before uploading it on Ankiweb servers. But I'm confident that this deck have high quality compared to what is currently on ankiweb.
I don't have a ton of math cards, but I have a few, plus I've used anki alongside a few other textbooks (as well as for learning programming languages, which is against the grain of common advice), and I've been using anki effectively for about three years now (I used it ineffectively for several months before that - I think the learning curve of making good cards about the right things is one of the hardest parts of anki).
I think long term retention of these texts is one of the biggest advantages it has. I tend to go through phases of caring and not caring about topics, and with anki I've been able to ignore a text for months and then jump back in pretty quickly (where before I would have had to start mostly over, even if I could move through the old material much faster than before).
Why the grain of common advice (never heard this expression before) says not to use Anki to learn programming language ? I find it useful in order to recall the order of the argument of certain functions, like List.fold_left and List.fold_right, that I often uses when programming.
The expression is "against the grain", deriving from cutting wood against its grain, fyi.
I don't know why common opinion is against it, it's just the impression I've gotten. I think it stems from the tendency to caution against blindly memorizing things that you could just look up when needed.
But there's a middle ground of things that I'll forget without anki cards but that I do use often enough to justify memorizing.
1- I hope it to works for long term memory. But I have been using Anki for 6 months now. Therefore, I can not say anything about remembering things for years. I can however, that it certainly helps remembering some things during a few months. It implies that it helps going through the book, even if it takes months to read an entire books. Because if I recall the n first chapter, it becomes really easyer to read chapter n+1.
2- It is really too soon for me to answer that. I can try to keep you updated in a few years :p I did not finish the deck of any text book yet since I began using Anki. Because I have 3 new cards by days, and hundreds of cards for some books. However, all decks are of the form «math::book». Hence I simultaneously see cards from a lot of different decks. I don't have any trouble with context, but it may be because I always write down all hypothesis. Therefore I always have all context in my cards. And if I think I have not enough context, I edit the card to add the missing information.
(For example, I currently read a book about group theory and a book about semigroup theory. After a few days, I understood I always must explicitely state whether a morphism is a morphism of group or a morphism of semigroup in order to have all context. Thus I edited 20 or 30 cards. And all was ok after that)
3-I will do it once I finished the deck at least one. I don't want to do it before that, because I can't know whether all cards are correct and makes sens until I tested myself all cards.
I've heard about Anki before, but I haven't tried this method of studying. Some questions related to mathematics I solved with the help of a tutor or various services, like WolframAlfa. Also, on this site, you can ask questions about mathematics (but not only), as on the Quora, and get useful answers and advice. Some useful information about Anki I found on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/43mf83/guide_how_to_anki_maths_the_right_way/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/47eyh1/anyone_here_use_anki_for_math_problems/
Thanks, this is useful.
I've been thinking about doing this - I'm trying to learn math (real/complex analysis, abstract algebra) for 'long term retention' as I'm not really using it right now but want to get ahead of learning it later, and struggling with retention of concepts and core proofs.
Do you think it's going to be useful to share decks for this purpose? I feel like there are many benefits to making my own cards and adding them as I progress through the material, and being handed a deck for the whole subject at once will be overwhelming.
I am going to share my decks when I'm confortable with their quality. They will all be on http://milchior.fr/Anki/ Right now, there is only the deck from Linear Algebra done Right. Both as an anki package and as text
In both case, you'll need an LaTeX compiler to see them correctly. Sharing the compiled version of LaTeX seems to be hard for my computer. I don't really know, when I try to export with the media, the programs halts.
I do think it is useful to share decks. Because I don't think creating the deck helped me a lot. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that it's a bas idea to use the deck for parts of the book you didn't read yet. It is why I do advise to suspend the chapter you didn't entirely understood yet.
As @Gurkenglas says, automatically suspending chapters could be a useful anki feature in this case. I'm not sure it would be useful for many people in general.
This leads me to another problem. An hypothesis may have many implications. And a property may be implied by many hypothesis. Therefore, it is better to state: