
Using Anki and Spaced Repetition - burtonator
https://getpolarized.io/2019/05/25/13-lucky-tips-for-using-anki-and-spaced-repetition-2019.html#
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seieste
The data policy of Polar is unacceptable to me. I’d like to be able to read
PDF’s without third party connections to multiple sites, which Polar seems to
do. I once spent part of an afternoon looking at where I’d need to remove
analytics, only to find that there are so many places that it wasn’t worth my
time. Further, some of the dependencies have their own google analytics
tracking, which makes Polar a minefield of privacy issues.

I think the idea of the software is great in theory, but I just can’t justify
constant phoning home when I can easily read PDF’s through any other (privacy-
respecting) PDF reader.

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dhandel
Nice, and open source. Bravo and congratulations. Such a nice step beyond
bookmarking webpages.

I have created [https://idorecall.com/](https://idorecall.com/) a web app
(soon to work in mobile browsers too). Unlike Polar, you upload your learning
files (Word, PPT, PDFs and image files as well as videos on Youtube) into
iDoRecall and read them there. If you see a concept that you comprehend or a
fact that you want to remember, create a spaced-repetition flashcard (we call
our RECALLS) linked to that fact/concept. Then when you practice your RECALLS,
if you forget an answer, click a link and the original source file/video opens
at the exact linked location where you created the RECALL. Refresh your memory
and quickly get back to your practice session. I wrote a few weeks ago about
my life experience that led me to create iDoRecall:
[https://medium.com/better-humans/how-to-unlock-the-
amazing-p...](https://medium.com/better-humans/how-to-unlock-the-amazing-
power-of-your-brain-and-become-a-top-student-369e5ba59484)

~~~
xkfm
Can you make cloze deletions from the material? I watched the video
haphazardly, and was unable to tell.

~~~
dhandel
You can simulate cloze deletions very easily:

Q: Earth is the _____ planet from the Sun. A: Earth is the third planet from
the Sun.

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hyperpape
Some interesting ideas, but why are question and answer cards better than
Cloze cards? A recent blog post ([https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-
strategies-tips-a...](https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies-
tips-and-tricks-for-spaced-repetition-anki/),
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19831526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19831526))
suggested Clozes were better. Neither one provided much reason to believe what
they said.

~~~
gbacon
To prepare for the FAA instrument written and oral exam component of the
checkride, I built an Anki deck
([https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2105122272](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2105122272))
with the following principles in mind, all of which favored cloze cards.

* Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge [https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules)

* Anki Guide for Medical Students [https://drwillbe.blogspot.com/2011/08/anki-guide-for-medical...](https://drwillbe.blogspot.com/2011/08/anki-guide-for-medical-students.html)

* How to make high quality Anki cards quickly [https://managingmedicine.org/2013/05/14/how-to-make-high-qua...](https://managingmedicine.org/2013/05/14/how-to-make-high-quality-anki-cards-quickly/)

* Anki Tips: What I Learned Making 10,000 Flashcards [http://rs.io/anki-tips/](http://rs.io/anki-tips/)

By default, Anki will show you only a few cards per day. Following suggestions
from med students who have to absorb a lot of information quickly, I made the
following settings changes:

* Options > New Cards
    
    
      * Steps (in minutes): 1 360
      * Order: Show new cards in random order
      * New cards/day: 9999
      * Graduating interval: 1 day
      * Easy interval: 2 days
      * Starting ease: 250%
      * Bury related new cards until the next day: UNCHECKED
    

* Options > Reviews
    
    
      * Maximum reviews/day: 9999
      * Easy bonus: 130
      * Interval modifier: 100
      * Maximum interval: 36500
      * Bury related new cards until the next day: CHECKED

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thepete2
I love anki, but I really don't like the code. I wish we could build something
modern, but still open, from scratch.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
Could you be specific? What are the problems with the codebase?

I've found that as a user, there are some really powerful features in Anki.
The distinction between notes and cards wasn't clear to me at first, but once
I discovered it, it allowed me to create some really useful decks. Being able
to create multiple cards, with HTML and CSS styling, testing various elements
of the same note is really nice.

~~~
Shorel
The fact that `sudo apt install anki` doesn't work out of the box is enough of
a problem for me.

Ok, the install works, but the software never runs.

This is one of the reasons my laptop is booting into Windows more often than
into Linux these days.

~~~
asymmetric
This has nothing to do with Anki though right? It’s the package maintainers
you should be talking to.

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nikki93
I've been using [https://chessable.com](https://chessable.com) for learning
chess openings, tactics, strategy recently. It's spaced repetition forms of
chess books and also courses made specifically for the platform. It works
quite well.

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rgrieselhuber
Polar looks really cool but it looks like there isn’t a self-hosted version?
I’m basically done with cloud data i don’t control (as much as possible...)

~~~
burtonator
I'm sympathetic to this and we'll be bringing up a version in the EU and also
adding E2E encryption at some point. Just not sure of the schedule at the
moment.

Right now though you can use it on a local disk and do a git commit of the
whole thing:

[https://getpolarized.io/docs/git-sync.html](https://getpolarized.io/docs/git-
sync.html)

The downside is that you have to restart every time. I'm not going to do
inotify due to scalability issues I've had with it plus Windows/Linux/MacOS
differences are going to kill me.

If you're using the cloud version (in the future when we have encryption plus
the EU datacenter option) it will also support partial sync which git doesn't
support now. This way you can keep just the most recent 500MB on disk.

Also, Polar is OSS so I'm anticipating others writing Filecoin, S3 and other
backends in the future.

------
Macross8299
These are some great tips! Been looking for something similar to this app to
help create anki decks directly from documents, kudos.

A sidetrack but are there any good resources on using Anki for learning
mathematics? Google brings up a lot of varied and conflicting info. I know
nothing is a substitute for working through proofs yourself but surely
flashcards can help with memorization of proofs and theorems?

~~~
Smaug123
Have an anecdote from me, who spent four years at Cambridge learning maths
with Anki.

Anki is peerless for learning large numbers of very small facts. I found it
very unsuited for learning relatively small numbers of large facts like entire
proofs. The best way I found to use it was to select one or two key, short,
intuitive (informal) milestones within each proof, and use Anki to associate
the theorem statement with those milestones. Any larger unit of memorisation
just didn't work for me - took too long to learn, made it a miserable slog to
get through the repetitions, and so on. Convert things to lists, where each
element of the list is small, and you have a much better chance. I did once
try and learn a proof of the three Sylow theorems by means of a 50-card Anki
deck, assembling a linked list of the stages of the proof; but even a single
sentence of proof can be more mathematically dense than really lends itself to
Anki, and I would probably redo it with fewer cards and more intuitive steps
(relying on my mathematical ability to fill in the gaps dynamically).

If you want to learn long formulae, I got some success out of setting them to
music. I learned the various differential operators in polar coordinates this
way, to avoid having to rederive them every time I needed them. (As an aside,
I learned Hard 'n Phirm's "Pi" song almost by accident, which got me nearly
150 digits of pi.)

~~~
james_s_tayler
My experience attempting math with Anki was similar even though it was just a
few undergrad papers. It can still have its place, just it won't get you
nearly as far as it gets you when learning a language or history or other more
easily digestible things.

It's exactly as you say. Small, quick to review facts. Anything else makes
reviews unbearable.

In a somewhat related experiment I'm trying to use it to learn codebases.
Important classes, outline of code paths etc. It's challenging. It sort of
works and sort of doesn't. I'm finding a similar thing to how you mention
learning milestones in a proof. Kind of memorizing hints that can help you
rather than full sequences of things.

------
Shorel
I really wish the Anki Ubuntu package was working out of the box. The Anki deb
package in the Ubuntu repositories is useless in Ubuntu 19.04.

So far the developer only supports his .tgz distribution and there's no Snap
or similar in the plans.

------
Xenograph
> For a given word you should have the definition and the forward and reverse
> translation.

Perhaps for simple/beginner words. But for more advanced words, it's important
to realize that our active vocabulary is necessarily much smaller than our
passive vocabulary. There are many words we can recognize but can't
immediately synthesize ourselves on demand just from an idea or concept (or a
translation, even). For anything beyond the most simple words, I think that
having the reverse translation doesn't make a whole lot of sense and can be
pretty counterproductive in developing one's passive vocabulary.

~~~
mikekchar
In fact, the opposite is true. Something that is harder to deal with
paradoxically is learned faster long term. Look for papers on "desirable
difficulties". Best to memorize from L1 to L2, although neither provides an
opportunity to acquire the language so make sure that you are only using it as
a bridge to help you comprehend native input. Get as much native input as you
can. Free reading is usually the easiest way to do that.

~~~
Gormisdomai
What does free reading mean in this context? I tried a Google search but got
ebook marketing spam.

~~~
goerz
Reading arbitrary text, out of interest (books, magazines, newspapers), as
opposed to reading for the explicit purpose of studying the language, in a
language class

------
damontal
How do software developers use these kinds of tools? What are you putting into
them? Surely not things like names of specific functions. How would a tool
like this help me learn python vs just coding in python?

~~~
chipuni
Pretty much, yes. I do put the names of specific functions in my Anki. And
concepts.

Instead of just describing what questions I put into Anki, here's a curated
selection of the for the Java language:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/647806244](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/647806244)

------
blasterjeff151
With all this talk of Polar, I want to mention the tool Weava as a great
annotation tool. I use it all the time as a way of annotating web content and
PDFs. It has a beautiful aesthetic. No integrations with Anki yet as far as
I'm aware. (I have no vested interest in the software, I'm just a big fan.)
[http://weavatools.com](http://weavatools.com)

------
chacha2
> If I’m reading an important Wikipedia page I save it to Polar...

So sick of seeing this pdf annotation software. You're never safe on this
site, you'll be reading a comment or blog post then bam it's a polar ad.

~~~
icebraining
You're complaining that a blog post on the site for the Polar software
contains ads for the Polar software?

~~~
arkades
No, he’s complaining about how frequently Polar ads show up on the HN front
page. The blog post being an ad.

~~~
sundar4344
I don't understand. To my knowledge HN does not have ads. Are you saying users
posting polar news repeatedly is being considered as ads ?

