
Anki: Memorization with Spaced Learning - tarboreus
https://apps.ankiweb.net/
======
tushartyagi
Also worth reading is the excellent (and pretty extensive) article by Michael
Nielsen[1] showcasing how he used Anki to create an in-depth knowledge about
AlphaGo.

Personally, I've used Anki to keep remembering/revisiting the concepts that I
use for a while and then move onto something else. Common APIs of programming
languages and their standard libraries is one such area. I've found that while
it's not really difficult to learn and get into the flow of using a
programming language (or history, mathematics, physics for that matter), it's
more difficult to try using the same knowledge after a break of few months.

My main language at work is C# and Web Development, but I keep trying to learn
other languages and domains in my free time. If I do not use the knowledge for
a few months, I forget everything. But with Anki I have to just open the app
for around 10 minutes a day and it helps me to recall such concepts in a
timely fashion.

I would suggest everyone who has the time and faces similar issues should give
it a shot.

[1]
[http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html](http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)

~~~
Sirupsen
This article is the best summarization of real, everyday usage of Anki outside
of language learning and medical studies which are common uses of Anki.
Reviewing flash cards is the highest leverage 10-15 minute habit I have
besides planning my day. There's a certain joy and relief from having a
reasonable confidence new information will be readily available to you for
years to come. Much knowledge is better absorbed through practice,
conversation, and writing. If you can distinguish between what you can learn
through flash cards, and what you can absorb through other practices and not
conflate the two too much—you'll be in a great place.

Some categories of cards I have that may serve as inspiration for others
wishing to get into flash cards..

    
    
      * Basic information about countries e.g. population
      * Ingredients and dishes from restaurant menus I didn't know
      * Important people and places
      * History facts (typically from Kindle highlights)
      * Conversions between units (e.g. lbs to kg)
      * Season for various vegetables and fruits
      * Keyboard shortcuts for vim, readline, etc.
      * Learning words and terms I don't know from Kindle/Instapaper highlights
      * Useful statistics

~~~
dylanbyte
Is there a convenient workflow for kindle highlights - > flashcards?

~~~
kristofferR
[https://github.com/neingeist/kindle-to-
anki](https://github.com/neingeist/kindle-to-anki)

~~~
Kagerjay
that's a webscraper not an official api though, reading through it uses
beautifulsoup.

------
laurieg
I've used Anki over the past 8 years or so very successfully. I strongly
recommend it to anyone learning a language. Here are some tips to get the most
out of it:

* Only put things you know into Anki. An individual Anki card should feel a little too easy when you make it.

* Put in words with a good amount of context. Avoid single words as much as possible. The quickest way to do this is to just input the sentence from the book/TV where you learned the word. You'll learn collocations and grammar structures by doing this.

* Delete cards when they give you trouble. Language learning is a marathon, if the word is important you'll see it again. If you keep getting a card wrong then you probably didn't actually learn it in the first place, or the card is written in a confusing way.

* Avoid the temptation to input huge lists of words automatically. Lots of beginners download "3000 Most Common Words", put them all into Anki and then give up within a few weeks. A language is much more than just a list of words.

~~~
afro88
Sounds like the way you use Anki is more of a learning supplementary rather
than a singular tool? Like you are learning of words elsewhere and entering
them into Anki for memorization once you have learned about them?

I’m just curious. I’d like to use Anki to get better at reading and playing
chords (on keyboard / piano) from symbol notation but I haven’t started yet.
Would you recommend learning each chord one by one and entering them into Anki
as I learn them?

~~~
laurieg
I think that's a very fair assessment of how I use Anki. I think if you spend
all your time using Anki and no time interacting with the actual language
you're learning you won't get very far. Basically every sentence I put into
Anki comes from a book, movie, TV show or conversation.

The question about piano chords is really interesting. I often compare
learning a language to learning to play the piano. Both are real time skills
that require _practice_ , to just learning. I meet someone who loves reading
grammar books I say "You can read a book on piano construction 100 times and
you won't learn to play the piano.

As for your case, what is the skill you want to learn? Playing the chords
right? Then that has to form the main focus of your practice. By all means,
use Anki to help memorise chord names and chord patterns but be careful: You
might just get really good at seeing a chord and saying it's name rather than
seeing a chord and playing it!

Also, sight-reading is a very real-time skill. You have to read those chords
and then play them on the right beat. If you practice chords with Anki you
might get good at seeing them in Anki and then playing them a few seconds
later, but it's not the same as doing it in real time.

~~~
afro88
So true. My goal with learning to play chords from symbols is to look at a
chord progression and be able to play it without too much trouble. Not really
for performance or anything, but to help with composition.

So perhaps a good approach would be to do the Anki spaced learning sessions in
front of the keyboard and actually play the chord as the answer. I may not
become a great real time sight reader, but being able to see a chord like C+9
/ C95 and be able to play it a second or two later should be good enough.

Thanks for the advice.

------
jameshart
I'm always a little confused when I see articles on the internet extolling the
virtues of spaced repetition learning. I don't doubt that it's a good way to
memorize things; it's just that I have never really found that _memorization_
was ever an obstacle to my ability to learn something. I've always found that
retention proceeds from _understanding_.

Time spent flicking through flashcards for vocabulary or formulae or chemical
paths or whatever seems like a poor substitute for time spent reading material
that uses the vocabulary, explains the derivation of the formulae, or
describes the chemical process, or whatever...

Is this just about passing tests, or is this genuinely how other people
approach learning?

~~~
kazinator
> _poor substitute for time spent reading material that uses the vocabulary_

You can't effectively read material without having enough vocabulary to cover
at least some 80% of it.

My most recent language learning experience is Japanese. The difference
between trying to read before cramming on an ~8000 word vocabulary and after
is night and day.

And the comparison basis here is not reading hardcopy, but electronic text
with the help of an instant dictionary lookup tool (hover the mouse over
anything to get to the reading and meanings instantly). That is to say, even
with that tool, which eliminates some of the barriers of the writing system,
trying to read is still like pulling teeth compared to the experience when
you're crammed on a decent chunk of vocab.

Vocab gets you to that point where you can guess the meanings of unknown words
from context, as well as their readings. You can start using mono-lingual
dictionaries and other resources.

Now if you're coming from, say, one European language to another, you may be
able to get away without using spaced repetition, because of a lot of shared
vocabulary (cognates) and concepts.

In any case, brute force reading _is_ spaced repetition. It's just inefficient
spaced repetition that fails to schedule the appearance of a word based on
your recall performance for that specific word.

~~~
cyborgx7
>electronic text with the help of an instant dictionary lookup tool (hover the
mouse over anything to get to the reading and meanings instantly)

Can you tell me what text you were reading and what tool you were using? This
sounds like exactly what I have been looking for my japanese learning.

~~~
mikekchar
Not the OP, but the reality is that you can read anything that interests you.
Especially when you are starting, the first few thousand common words are
incredibly common. So you'll get those over and over and over again. The main
problem is that depending on what grammar is present, you may have
difficulties.

There is something called the "natural order hypothesis" that states that the
order in which people acquire the grammatical structures of a language is
roughly the same, no matter what order the grammar is introduced. This is one
of Stephen Krashen's hypotheses that has some good evidence in trials.

So the problem is that if you pick a piece that has a lot of grammar that you
haven't acquired yet, you'll be spinning your wheels for a long time. The
solution to this is simply to move on and find something else to read.

As for tools, the rikaichan plug in in Firefox and the Chromium port
(rikaikun) are the main ones. There are lots of children's stories on the
internet. Search for 昔話. You'll find lots to read :-) If you're a bit more
advanced, then news is always good. TBS news is nice because they always give
you both the video and audio along with the text (which is invariably exactly
the same as what's in the video):
[http://news.tbs.co.jp/](http://news.tbs.co.jp/)

But you can even read Twitter or and other social medium. I spent a long time
reading the Ruby dev list in Japanese to learn computer terms. Good luck on
your studies!

~~~
cyborgx7
Thanks a lot for the tips. Really appreciate it.

------
rdfi
I've been using Anki since 2013 (almost 5 years). One really nice thing about
Anki is that it has analytics. I currently have 4532 cards and my numbers are
99.18% correct answers for "Learning" (very young) cards, 98.44% for Young
cards and 92.52% for Mature cards. No way I would be able to remember over
4000 pieces of information without spaced repetition. I truly believe this is
the best learning "hack" there is. I've wrote about my experience here:
[https://www.blinkingcaret.com/2016/05/04/hack-your-brain-
lea...](https://www.blinkingcaret.com/2016/05/04/hack-your-brain-learn-faster-
better/)

------
jacekm
I've been using Anki for some time and I love it but it's not a perfect tool.
What I especially like is it's flexibility when it comes to designing
flashcards. You can adjust colors, font-sizes and pretty much every visual
aspect using css code. You can even embed your own font within a deck, which
can come in handy when you are dealing with Japanese kanji (Printed and
handwritten kanji sometimes differ and iPhone contains only "printed" versions
of kanji fonts. I searched online for a "handwritten" font and embedded it
into my decks).

There are cons too. The flexibility comes at the price - while reviewing the
flashcards is smooth and easy, creating a deck can be very frustrating - the
interface is not the most user-friendly. I ended up creating decks in Excel,
exporting to csv and importing in Anki. That made the whole process much
easier but I still had to jump through some hoops to achieve that.

Another problem (with the algorithm, not Anki itself) is that it's very easy
to forget what you've just learned if you don't keep using the app. It's super
easy to learn hundreds of vocabulary within a short period of time and pass
the exam, but you need to keep reviewing the deck for at least a year,
otherwise you'll forget it as quickly as you've learned it.

~~~
wodenokoto
> Another problem (with the algorithm, not Anki itself)

My main gripe with the algorithm is you can't take weekends off. I used Anki a
lot in College, and Mondays where terrible, due to the backlog built-up over
the weekend.

One could also say, one shouldn't be drinking the weekend away ...

~~~
aasasd
Actually, it's mentioned several times in the docs that you shouldn't think
that backlog build-up means you have to crunch―or more specifically, IMO,
'backlog' isn't a thing here at all. If you can only put in thirty minutes a
day, then do it and then close the app, this doesn't change because of a
missed day. The cards will be there the next day, it's not like they catch
fire when you skip a session. Stressing over the backlog would likely only
make your mind work worse.

Instead, change the limit of cards to review to the number that you can get
through in the time you have.

(Unless your college schedule requires you to actually crunch some number of
cards every day? I don't know if that's a thing, but using spaced repetition
in such a case would seem ill-fitting anyway.)

~~~
wodenokoto
> Instead, change the limit of cards to review to the number that you can get
> through in the time you have.

I actually brought this up with the devs. The way Anki counts this limit is
just how many draws from the stack. A better way (and much more intuitively
aligned with the wording) to count this, would be to limit the size of the
stack you draw from.

------
xkfm
I use supermemo, and the vast majority of my collection isn't language
related. For languages, something like clozemaster, supermemo.com, or premade
anki decks/courses are fine.

I still find it odd that the only two groups of people who seem to use the
software a lot are med students and language learning enthusiasts.

Supermemo is really buggy, and the website is extremely disorganized, but has
a lot of useful information on it. The main reason I use it is its incremental
reading function. Essentially, you can import articles, and turn them into
flashcards in one swoop, while still having access to the full text via built
in search (if you choose).

For example, I just finished importing most of the CSS reference [1]. And it
only took me ~10 minutes to open the tabs and import them into Supermemo. Each
page will get whittled down into flashcards over the next few weeks.

As others have stated, my srs usage is actually quite a small portion of my
day, and extremely high leverage.

The hardest skill to learn is learning how to make flashcards properly [2]. I
almost exclusively rely on cloze deletions now.

I do my repetitions in the morning when my memory is still fresh.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference)

[2]
[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules)

~~~
aasasd
There's a plugin for Anki for incremental reading:
[https://github.com/luoliyan/incremental-
reading](https://github.com/luoliyan/incremental-reading)

(Though I'm not sure how the internal database structure works with that, I
think you can't save the whole text along with a deck instead of individual
notes―but maybe addons can change that.)

~~~
xkfm
I tried it awhile ago, and it didn't work well, but I'll try it again.
Incremental reading is kind of finicky to get right. Incremental reading is
the real draw of these programs for me, and Supermemo (despite it's flaws) is
kind of the only one that has a decent implementation of it.

~~~
tushartyagi
That's my story as well. I tried the Anki plugin and didn't find it as per my
taste.

Now incremental reading for me is a multi-monitor and multipass approach. One
monitor has Anki, the other has the thing I'm reading. I keep on reading and
keep noting down questions.

I've also come to realise that the context is totally different when I frame a
question during reading, and when I revisit the same question later. A lot of
times I have to clean-up the question: perhaps add a little more context,
change wording etc. so it becomes a bit easier to answer.

------
lgessler
I couldn't imagine learning a language without Anki. I had to learn Coptic in
a month, which required memorizing the most common ~1000 words in the
language. Anki made this as easy as it can be. I don't think I would have been
able to meet my deadline had I been making paper flashcards or using some more
informal system.

The nice thing about Anki is that you can use it at any time without any
overhead associated with beginning or ending your session. There are so many
scraps of time in my day (on the bus, waiting for someone to meet me, waiting
for my food to heat up in the microwave, walking to the store, etc.) that are
mostly only useful for being a zombie on my phone, enjoying my surroundings,
or being alone with my thoughts, which are all also sometimes appropriate uses
of the time, but in all of these times, I can also just pull out my phone and
start reviewing my cards, even if I get in just a few.

~~~
ColinWright
What was your list of the most common ~1k words? Do you have a link?

~~~
lgessler
This is an Anki deck that was made from the book I used:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1657789477](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1657789477)

I made my own Anki deck because this deck didn't have tags by chapter, and I
wanted to study only the words I'd been exposed to so far.

~~~
ColinWright
Thanks for that - do you know if there is a way to export the list of words
without going through the full process of installing Anki? I'm interested in
different people's concept of "the thousand most useful words" and would love
to extract the list you've used. It seems like it would be less overall work
for you to do it than for me to do it, although I realise I'm asking you to do
work.

Thanks.

~~~
lgessler
Looks like the APKG format is a SQL dump[0], so perhaps, depending on how
determined you are. My cards wouldn't be too useful as they are because many
cards contain English prompts ("Which verb forms must have their direct
objects incorporated into bound states?"), and the cards that do contain words
have various inconsistencies depending on the part of speech, such as lemma-
like forms that you would never see in an actual text as-is for prepositions,
or multiple conjugation bases for verbs. So yeah, it'd be a hassle to put it
into a normalized format. Sorry about that.

Not sure what the nature of your interest is, but I'm sure you must be
familiar with what a Swadesh list[1] is? It's only a couple hundred instead of
a thousand, and the words (or rather, their meanings) are chosen in advance,
but it's a close concept.

[0]:
[http://decks.wikia.com/wiki/Anki_APKG_format_documentation](http://decks.wikia.com/wiki/Anki_APKG_format_documentation)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list)

------
inetsee
I really like the idea of spaced repetition learning, but it's the little
details that are driving me crazy.

I cannot get Anki working on Raspberry Pi. (I have a Raspberry Pi connected to
a TV in front of my rowing machine so I can study while I'm exercising.) I
tried Mnemosyne but I can't get the sync server working, and I'm disappointed
in the formatting options provided. I tried org-drill but adding images to
cards is quite difficult.

Right now I'm working on writing some Javascript that can be plugged into web
pages to provide the spaced repetition functionality. That way I would have
the full capability of html5, css3, javascript, etc. Syncing would be handled
by whatever file syncing software the user preferred. Creating/editing cards
would be by whatever workflow the user wanted.

If anybody has any other solutions to the problems I'm having (running Anki on
Raspberry Pi, Mnemosyne syncing/formatting, etc), I'm ready to listen.

~~~
nathanasmith
Have you tried just going to the website
[https://ankiweb.net/decks/](https://ankiweb.net/decks/) and reviewing your
cards there? It should work on any device with a browser including your
RasberryPi.

~~~
inetsee
I tried going to the Anki website and I discovered another thing that I don't
like about Anki. I went to one of my old decks and tried one of the cards; the
spacing options for this card were <10 minutes, 1, 2 and 6 YEARS. I'd really
like more control over the spacing of the card presentations.

~~~
ShinTakuya
You can actually change that up all in the settings (even on a per deck
basis). It takes a bit of tinkering because it's not clear from the beginning
what each setting does. Typically if I get something wrong I reset it to 20%
of its previous time (so if it was a month since I saw it last I'd see it in
around 6 days).

I'd trust the system though. Typically once you get to the point where you
won't see it for more than a year you're highly unlikely to forget the content
anyway. Although it depends on what you're trying to learn. The default
settings are optimised for learning Japanese.

------
Noumenon72
I used Anki for about a year, and it definitely didn't work for me. Going
through and remembering the answers was always a struggle. I only ended up
with 36 cards -- the idea of making a bunch for every person I meet and book I
read would overload my memory like crazy.

My memory has always been really good at indexing "what's the word for that",
"there is an algorithm for this called X", "the keyboard shortcut for this is
Y", "there is something weird about the way Z works in situation W". But it's
index only, and I have to look up the content every time. At least since I
turned 35 and realized I was forgetting the answer to every problem I'd solved
before.

It's been 2.5 years and I don't remember the answers to any questions. Maybe
using it for precise definitions is the wrong way, as that might be more like
remembering 20 things in a row. I had questions like

Q: What is type erasure? A: Java implements generic types by deleting them. It
does a compile-time check that your types match, then replaces the types with
their bounds (eg, when T extends Number) or with Object.

I have retained a vague, but not precise knowledge of what type erasure is. I
know exactly what to do when I program something that uses it. But even Anki
can't give me the kind of sharp memory you might need for a job interview or
quiz.

It's so easy for me to learn things by working with them. Hundreds of
concepts, functions, keywords, and strategies a year, more than all my
colleagues. I tried to memorize the things I _don 't_ use every day. It was
unpleasant and that made it unsuccessful.

~~~
Jtsummers
Your answer doesn't answer the question. You ask what type erasure is and then
answer with some very specific information on Java's generics. Nothing in your
question indicates that it's about Java or generics.

> Maybe using it for precise definitions is the wrong way, as that might be
> more like remembering 20 things in a row.

This is exactly what it can be like. The 20 rules from SuperMemo are really
useful for trying to formulate and transform the cards.

[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules)

~~~
Noumenon72
It's always odd how failing at most things leads me to ask "how am I doing
this wrong?" and overcome, but I never asked this about Anki. Thanks for the
link.

I was not aware till this moment that type erasure was something that C++ also
has. I thought it was a specific gotcha for Java like the whole "no == for
Strings" thing. In that context, I've only seen it connected to generics.

------
hazard
I've had huge success using Anki in taking required professional exams. I'm in
finance, so at various times I've had to take the JSDA, the Series 56, and
Series 65.

I originally signed up for a Kaplan class for the 65, thinking it was going to
be a cram class. In reality, it turned out to be a review class. Halfway
through the first day on Monday, I told the teacher I hadn't started reviewing
the material yet for the test on Friday. He said I was essentially a lost
cause, and I should sign up to take the test again in a month.

I immediately left the classroom and spent the rest of the day entering every
question from the practice exams into Anki. I spent 8-10 hours the next 3 days
doing nothing but running Anki questions. On Friday, I crushed the exam.

Other useful things I've learned with Anki include the Number Major System and
the answers to a bunch of those useless "brainteaser" interview questions.

------
_raoulcousins
Is there a popular repository of shared Anki decks other than
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/)?

~~~
blaket
Not that I know of, but I recommend making your own decks. Two reasons: you
only add what you're interested in learning as you're reviewing material and
figuring out how to make the cards for your material helps learning.

~~~
philsnow
I recently started a new job, and wrote a quick script that scrapes a slack
team for all the names and profile photos and creates an Anki deck out of it.
I'm usually terrible with names and faces so this helped me immensely.

~~~
Nadya
Do you mind sharing the script? Because the company I work for has grown at an
insane rate - and there are a good 300+ coworkers I don't know. It'd be nice
to know peoples' faces for when I see them walking around the building.

~~~
philsnow
[https://github.com/philsnow/slanki](https://github.com/philsnow/slanki)

~~~
Nadya
Thank you very much!

------
roger_wiz
Anki is great, but it's easy to use wrong. It can't be overstated how
important it to design your flashcards well. Do it wrong and you'll quickly be
frustrated and overwhelmed by the work you have to put towards memorizing the
info.

The best guidelines I've found on writing flashcards are Supermemo's 20 rules:
[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules).
Honestly, this is a seminal work that anyone jumping into SRS or flashcards in
general should read.

I also found this recent discussion about spaced repetition on HN to be very
helpful:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17706776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17706776)

As far as Anki itself is concerned: Make sure to check out some of the add-ons
that are out there – they can really improve your workflow and motivate you to
keep on going:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/addons/](https://ankiweb.net/shared/addons/)

------
vedtopkar
Anki has become the de-facto standard for memorizing the large swaths of
information required during medical school. Not everyone uses it, but pretty
much everyone that does and sticks to it sees impressive results.

~~~
jhayward
> _Not everyone uses it, but pretty much everyone that does and sticks to it
> sees impressive results._

This is another way of say "everyone that it works for gets good results"

~~~
nathanasmith
It's interesting to note in studies comparing spaced repetition vs. massed
learning, when students are asked afterward which method works better, they
more often choose massed even though their own test results favor spaced
repetition[0]. The upshot is people can use spaced repetition, it can "work"
(in the sense that they remember the material better and test better) yet
still drop it thinking massed practice to be superior.

[0][https://www.gwern.net/docs/spacedrepetition/2001-simon.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/spacedrepetition/2001-simon.pdf)

------
ainar-g
For anyone who wants to use spaced repetition for learning languages, I
recommend Clozemaster[1]. It uses the cloze deletion technique and has
thousands of sentences for most languages. Using it has significantly improved
my German.

[1] [https://www.clozemaster.com/](https://www.clozemaster.com/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test)

~~~
jacekm
Interesting, I just tried it for Japanese. But too often I could fill in a
word without understanding it (there's often only one grammatical form that
fits). Also each sentence is accompanied by English translation which feels a
little bit like cheating ;) Does the method still works even with the
translation available?

~~~
ainar-g
It works, but you can actually disable the translation in the settings, or
make it show _after_ you've answered.

------
garden
I use Anki everyday for medical school and for personal learning-- geography,
notes from books I've read, research ideas I've thought up I want to review
later, etc.

If you put in the time (I do at least 45 minutes of Anki a day, which turns
out to be roughly 300 cards, 50+ of which are new) and you're consistent, the
volume of information you can retain is truly staggering.

I have a retention rate of 90.1% and I've learned 15000 cards over the last 16
months.

About 2000 of those cards are my own-- the rest are fromv arious premade
medical decks. Using premade decks is perfectly fine, but you do need to make
you get a first pass of the material through some other method first-- Anki is
not ideal for learning material, just retaining it.

Mnemonics can be successfully integrated into Anki cards-- but I think they're
best for information that's easily confused with other bits or for really
tedious stuff. Example: remembering which random medical drug is best for
which genetic mutation, or which chromosome is mutated in which disease. Stuff
like that is just pure tedium-- so translate it into images with the Major
Mnemonic System or into memorable images like Sketchy Microbiology does.

------
emmanueloga_
It seems there's a lot of evidence spaced repetition is an effective learning
aid. Two things come to mind:

First, some times I see ppl calling spaced repetition a "trick" or "hack" (I
read "shortcut"), but the truth is, using SRS actually entails a lot of work!
[0] It seems a pretty important part of the process is to formulate your own
cards, which also puts more emphasis in understanding first and memorizing
later [1]. SRS is a hack to memorize as much as going to the gym is a hack to
gain muscles...

Second some ppl object that "memorizing is not understanding", but I think
better recall aids in faster learning, so one feeds the other. [1], again,
talks about this: one should only strive to remember what one has already
understood. OTOH, a lot of types of knowledge requires mostly memorization.
For instance: irregular verb conjugations.

0: I tried SRS and failed to keep up a bunch of times... and I want to give it
a sec^H^Hthird chance at some point!

1:
[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules)

~~~
aasasd
I see SRS as simply automation of the natural need of the memory: facts have
to be repeated to be remembered. It's not like one can just dismiss that
neuronal connections get stronger on repetition.

Then, a computerized approach allows for fine control of many variables in the
scheduling of individual cards.

Some people use mnemonics to boost memorization, essentially supplying context
and associations where there's none—hijacking another natural tendency of
memory. But you can't invent many mnemonics e.g. for geographic facts, and
rote memorization is the primary approach there. (And IMO mnemonics are
fragile and unreliable due to their nature of being invented out of thin air.)

------
stephenl
I found Anki the only software that can easily make flash cards using LaTeX. I
typically have a lot of equations and I prefer to write my cards using the
outlines package in LaTeX. It makes it very easy to write bulleted lists.
[https://www.ctan.org/tex-
archive/macros/latex/contrib/outlin...](https://www.ctan.org/tex-
archive/macros/latex/contrib/outlines)

In the latest version of Anki, the LaTeX is rendered using SVG and looks great
on Retina and HiDPI screens without having large file sizes.

I know others who maintain their cards/latex in a text file and import the
changes rather than working in the Anki software for creating and maintaining
cards.

------
axiomek
About a week ago I developed a browser plugin for chrome and firefox which
replaces the new tab page with anki flashcards to review. The idea is that
with it, each time I open a new tab I will review a few cards, thus making it
more lightweight than an hour-long anki session. If anyone is interested the
code (licensed under The Unlicense) and links to the web stores can be found
at
[https://github.com/corollari/ankiTab](https://github.com/corollari/ankiTab)
Note: In order for it to work you need to be logged in ankiweb.net

~~~
Kagerjay
wow this is a great tool, I have been searching for something like this.

If only there was a way to quickly add cards that would be nice.

------
AlphaWeaver
I started using Anki a few weeks ago when the SuperMemo article popped up on
HN. I really like it, and it has helped me remember key terms and learn a new
language, all in a really short time...

Feel free to ask me questions if you're confused about how it works! I'm
fairly experienced now.

~~~
baxtr
I want to learn Spanish. I have a basic vocabulary and understanding. What’s
the fastest way forward in your opinion?

~~~
drivers99
"Fluent Forever" has a suggestion of putting a picture (from, say, google
image search) on the front of the card, and the foreign word as the answer.
That way you test yourself by producing the correct word without translating
it from language 1 to language 2.

Example for Spanish:

Front: picture of a "gatito" from google image search. Back: gatito

The word "kitten" is not used at all. No translations!

The reason you search images in the foreign language is that sometimes the
foreign word has a different connotation, and isn't a direct translation. (The
example he used was for "girl" in Russian. девушка supposedly means "girl" and
yet when you search it, it's (mostly) seemingly a certain type, not "girl" in
general.)

~~~
adrianN
That only works for simple words. For example when I google for
"Zufriedenheit" (satisfaction), I get a picture of a red boat.

------
breakpointalpha
Spaced learning really works. I've started to slowly convert python, sql, and
postgres docs to flash cards in Anki.

Anki's implementation has some rough edges, but for $0/mon for multi-device
use, it's an amazing way to get your feet wet with this learning technique.

~~~
erikb
The iphone app costs like $25 tho.

~~~
h4b4n3r0
There’s now a free app that seems to do the same thing.

~~~
erikb
Afaik this one cannot connect to Ankiweb, therefore you can't sync your status
with other devices.

~~~
h4b4n3r0
It does seem to offer sync, too. Not sure how well the sync works, but the app
says it will sync.

------
vram22
Derek Sivers (CD Baby guy) had written an article about how to memorize a
programming language using SRS and Anki:

[https://sivers.org/srs](https://sivers.org/srs)

------
scolby33
This looks like a derivative/expansion of the Leitner Method[0] which I first
came across over on Reddit in /r/flying for flashcard-based studying. I have
definitely always had more success with paper-based studying than studying
electronically--I recommend that you take a look at that document if you fall
into this category as well!

[0]
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzlHy07nfEjOQ2hXWjU3LWpDdmc...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzlHy07nfEjOQ2hXWjU3LWpDdmc/view)

~~~
aasasd
I'd say one of the main benefits with Anki or SuperMemo is that the automation
of the algorithm allows for many more variables than you could track manually.
For each card, the history of its reviews can be remembered and taken into
account―e.g. both Anki and SM have several possible answers for how well you
remember the card instead of just "yes/no," varying the next interval relative
to the previous one. You can tune parameters for each set of cards, allocating
more or less attention to them depending on how easily you remember different
kinds of information. This control, IMO, optimizes the schedule over the
course of months. (Though it does make tweaking the params rather complicated
sometimes.)

------
antykodon
I've used anki for learning German a few years ago and it really worked for me
- I was able to learn a few (<500) hundred new words in about 2 months. Not
bad at all for a person with no language talent. Although, I've stopped
learning the language 3 years ago, I still understand German texts, thanks to
anki.

When using anki, a browser extension, enabling creation of flashcards, from
the content found on the Internet, is handy. I find a website fluentcards.com
and its browser extension, quite OK. Unluckily, it seems not to be maintained
and there is no official add-on for Firefox, but you can build it from the
github repo [1] and it will work on FF, too. The webpage also allows export of
the words saved on Kindle to the anki.

There are also a few extensions for learning Japanese specifically. [2] seems
to be the most popular.

[1] [https://github.com/katspaugh/fluentcards-
extension](https://github.com/katspaugh/fluentcards-extension)

[2]
[https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/](https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/)

------
naguas
I started Anki about two weeks ago and I've already reviewed over 1,200 cards.
It's a fun way to start the day and is surprisingly therapeutic. It really
makes remembering a choice.

------
leandot
Related and useful website I've found -
[https://codecode.ninja/](https://codecode.ninja/), spaced learning for devs

------
fyrabanks
Not to be an ass, but is there some new feature of Anki I'm missing? Or is
this kind of like posting "Google: A Search Engine Worth Checking Out"?

~~~
dotancohen
I would absolutely read "Google: A Search Engine Worth Checking Out". For the
past few years, one can be longer do verbatim searches with operators, and
every short search is filled with movie and pop music results even though I
consume neither.

If there is anything worth checking it about Google's search engine today, I
would want to know.

Rant off: I'm sure that those in the HN crowd who don't yet know what Anki is,
would like to. It is the whole secret to my career success.

------
noddy1w
I got through all my medical anaesthesiology board exams with anki,although i
do prefer flashcards where the order is the same rather than anki style algo.

------
aeto
I'm a big fan of spaced repetition, made a lightweight browser extension to
carry around with me when I'm surfing the web
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/harvest-take-
notes...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/harvest-take-notes-and-
le/dejecgndbecimagkaefkfdaedaimamji)

------
tayo42
If anyone is familiar with memrise, is it simmilar?

~~~
xkfm
It does, but many of the decks on memrise are horribly made, so I stopped
using it. Clozemaster is much better in my opinion.

------
graeme
I’m using anki to gradually learn japanese kanji using the RTK method. Working
really well so far, up to about 800 with little struggle.

~~~
irq11
Take my advice, as a somewhat advanced learner: don’t do this. RTK is this
weird honeypot for beginning learners, but it’s nearly always a mistake. The
“discouraged RTK user” is almost a comic meme in Japanese language study.

You will spend months “learning kanji”, only to discover that knowing kanji
meanings, in isolation, is unhelpful in most situations. You can get all of
the same benefits, with more immediate utility, by just learning words.

~~~
graeme
Thanks. So, I'm actually doing it as a side thing while learning German. I
have found I can't do two languages at once, but that learning the characters
doesn't interfere.

I should finish them by April or so, and be advanced enough in German at that
point that I can switch to Japanese. At which point I'll do Pimsleur and
Assimil.

I think having the character base will accelerate that process. I previously
tried Pimsleur Japanese, but found it didn't go smoothly compared to European
languages I've done. The lack of characters was a big hurdle.

Thanks though. Is discouraged RTK learner someone who completed RTK, or
someone who fails to

~~~
irq11
Someone who fails. The usual pattern is: new learner goes all-in on RtK, makes
it a month or two, then gives up after realizing that they’re making no
discernible progress, even though they “know” lots of kanji.

There are useful parts of RtK, but they’re the parts Heisig didn’t invent:
radicals and mnemonics. You can (and should) employ both, but in the context
of words. As you learn words, the “meanings” of kanji will naturally settle in
your brain.

RtK people love to argue that it helps them infer the meanings of words and
discriminate similar kanji. But in practice, it’s insanely difficult to do the
former (except for simple words), and the latter is rarely necessary. It’s far
more common to encounter 2-3 kanji compounds with unique meanings that
recombine into words, than it is to find words that compose meanings from
their individual kanji.

~~~
graeme
Yeah, I could see that happening. I'm not expecting it to be a panacea, just a
mild accelerant I can actually do while waiting to finish with German.

What do you think of that plan? My assumption is that I'll better be able to
learn the words in the Pimsleur course the second time around when I can see
the writing, and that this will make the overall process easier. It felt like
too much, cognitively, the last time.

And at my current pace, the Kanji are about 30 min per day, so it mostly feels
fun. If I were doing more I don't think it would be worthwhile, it would be
stressful.

~~~
irq11
To be honest, I think you’d be better off just studying words. Studying kanji
really doesn’t help you.

~~~
graeme
Right, but zero? I can’t study Japanese words at the moment without
interfering with German.

~~~
jstandard
If you're doing it mostly for fun with a side benefit of recognizing a few
characters here and there, go for it. Just know you're choosing to learn in a
way that's not really recommended for most.

If your learning goals are mostly focused around reading, it's helpful a bit.

If you want to actually understand and use the language, hiragana, katakana,
vocab and grammar have much higher utility.

~~~
irq11
This is correct.

My most complete advice would be to focus exclusively on the language you’re
learning and don’t futz around with half-measures, but who am I to tell you
what to study? If you’ve gotta satisfy the itch, then sure, you might learn
something.

------
cheunste
It has been a while since I used Anki and I vaguely recall I have a horrible
experience with creating cards.

I really wish there is a way I can create cards in vim or something, but that
sounds really limited when it comes to things like Chinese where you need to
somehow write out the character or find an image of it on the Internet.

~~~
vaughnegut
Honest question, what is so hard about writing Chinese to create carss? I find
at least typing in pinyin on windows and android isn't so bad, or did you mean
specifically in the context of vim?

~~~
cheunste
specifically with vim.

------
Marorin
I always kinda wondered how to make Anki stuff for like algorithms and the
like.

~~~
xkfm
For Anki, I'd grab the complete article from Wikipedia/textbook/[good source],
and then write a few examples. The flashcards would be a number of cloze
deletions, and then I'd have a separate deck with a practice question to
recall from a blank state. For example [1], I'd take this Wikipedia article,
and break it down like so:

In computer science, a stack is an abstract data type that serves as a
collection of elements, with two principal operations: pop and push.

This sentence would become a number of flashcards that look like ([...] is a
cloze deletion where you have to insert the missing word, each cloze is a
flashcard):

In computer science, a [...] is an abstract data type that serves as a
collection of elements, with two principal operations: pop and push.

In computer science, a stack is an abstract data type that serves as a [...]
of elements, with two principal operations: pop and push.

In computer science, a stack is an abstract data type that serves as a
collection of [...], with two principal operations: pop and push.

In computer science, a stack is an abstract data type that serves as a
collection of elements, with [...] principal operations: pop and push.

In computer science, a stack is an abstract data type that serves as a
collection of elements, with two principal operations: [...] and push.

In computer science, a stack is an abstract data type that serves as a
collection of elements, with two principal operations: pop and [...].

You'd do that for most of the article. Find a few examples of a stack, do the
same thing from cloze deletions, and then in a separate card, make a few
questions to have you write from scratch, parts of a stack.

The separate deck would be so your regular reviews don't take forever, when
you get a question asking you to write out a stack. The other deck would be
done say 3-4 days a week, and have many fewer cards, because they're going to
take awhile to answer. You could even use the index card method for this part
as it's closer to actual practice than recall.

In another deck, I'd also have short answer questions. For example, what's the
difference between a stack and a queue, or stack and array, etc. This would
also be more for practice sessions, rather than daily repetitions, as the
questions could take awhile to answer.

Note that you'll have a ton of flashcards this way for each algo, but they'll
be extremely easy to answer (a good thing). Five flashcards you can answer in
2-10 seconds each, is much better than one flashcard that takes you a minute
to answer.

Assuming five seconds to answer a flashcard, you could easily do 120
repetitions through the day. The nice thing about Anki is the mobile clients,
so you can do a few cards while you have some downtime. When I was in school,
I was usually doing flashcards while I was waiting for class to start or going
to the bathroom etc.

~~~
DarthMader
That seems like a waste of flashcards to me, but if it works for you, it
works. I would just create one flashcard for front and back. What is a stack
in CS? A stack is an abstract data type that's a collection of elements, with
two principal operations: pop and push. If an answer's longer than 1-2
sentences then it's time to break it apart into different questions.

~~~
xkfm
I find it somewhat excessive (and I still make poor cards even my by own
guidelines all the time), but I try optimize to make my flashcards as easy as
possible to answer according to [1].

Especially in the long run once you get thousands of flashcards, and have a
few breaks because of life. A general rule of thumb I go by is that my answer
should be shorter than the question.

Even in your answer there's three or four separate parts to it. You have:

1\. An abstract data type 2\. collection of elements 3\. Two principal
operations 3a. Pop and push

[1]
[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules)

~~~
DarthMader
Fair enough. I guess I'm pointing out with cloze questions that don't hide all
the selected text, you're perhaps making it too easy. I prefer hiding all,
showing one. On a test, you might be able to get similar hints but if the
understanding isn't there you might be thrown off by different wording. If I'm
creating the knowledge for work, I'd rather simplify as much as possible,
break up into different parts where necessary, and learn the answer exactly.
Relying on additional context is not something I'd do. For those reasons, I'd
prefer regular flashcards when possible. The other benefit of a single
flashcard is it's easier for organization purposes.

------
rradish
I really like the [https://ankimono.com](https://ankimono.com) webapp,
although creating your own clone is a great way to learn a new framework or
language.

~~~
roger_wiz
That's a clozed-source knockoff of Anki. With SRS it's important that you
choose a solution that will still be working in 5, 10, or even 20 years. Anki
being open-source and sporting an open format fits that bill. Also, it has a
proper desktop app, so you never need to worry about losing access to your
data ahead of an important exam, etc.

------
seeker12521
Does anyone here have suggestions or similar experience with strategies to
maintain physical practices like sports, martial arts or playing musical
instruments?

------
Marorin
Always wanted to try this, never was sure how to use it for algorithms and the
like though.

------
sigi45
While I do like the project, the webui is horrible :/.

~~~
DarthMader
It's a lot better for the desktop app and the add-ons make it more powerful.

------
mrmondo
$39AUD for the mobile app with no free / demo version is more than a little
steep IMO.

~~~
OriginalPenguin
The desktop version is free and open source. You'll want to start with the
desktop version anyway, because it's easier to make your cards on a computer
than a phone.

After a while you'll know if it's for you or not. Then you can buy the iOS
version.

The Android version is made by a different set of people, and it's completely
free as well. It's called AnkiDroid.

