Spaced Repetition literature review prize: And the winner is...
The Spaced Repetition literature review prize for the best new review of the evidence on Spaced Repetition has ended and the judging panel has made its decision. The prize attracted entries from Duke (entry) and Gwern (entry). After reviewing the submissions separately and then discussing them together, the judging panel unanimously judged Gwern's entry to be the best.
With great pleasure, we now award Gwern the prize of $385.
Anki cards for Gwern's review are available as the shared deck "Gwern Spaced Repetition Lit Review". If you have improvements or alternate decks, post them in the comments.
The three judges, BenLowell, Guy Srinivasan and John Salvatier (me), are Seattle LessWrongers who volunteered to judge the contest.
We thank Duke and Gwern for their submissions, as well as users randomwalker, Antisuji, Dr_Manhattan, Benquo, Nick_Roy for contributing to the prize fund.
Memory, Spaced Repetition and Life
I have made the case that with the advent of the internet went the need to memorize anything. Why worry about memorizing when I'll never be tested for a grade and can access knowledge nearly instantaneously? As well, I reasoned, I have probably already memorized everything I need to. I focused my time instead on learning thinking techniques, such as Bayesian calculations, expected value calculations and various things for improving emotional control.
But after reading this a couple months back I decided to experiment with Anki, a digital flashcard program which exploits a cognitive phenomenon called the Spacing Effect by implementing a memorization technique called Spaced Repetition. The Spacing Effect is the widely observed tendency for people to recall information better when studied a few times over a long period than when studied many times over a short period. Balota et al (2007):
Anki deck for biases and fallacies
Followup to: Spaced Repetition Database for A Human's Guide to Words
There's a great list of cognitive biases and fallacies on Wikipedia. For those who wish to aid their learning with some Anki cards, I've shared a deck. Just search "biases" in Anki.
For those who use a different program, here are the cards in a tab-separated file.
I'll soon update it to also contain the list of memory biases.
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