
Spaced Repitition - rfreytag
http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition
======
iagooar
If you like spaced repetition and like to "compete" against people while
learning, you must try out [http://www.memrise.com/](http://www.memrise.com/)

The website is appealing to the eye, has a lot of courses and users. There is
a free (!) iOS / Android version which synchronizes with / through your
Memrise web account.

I get no money for recommending it, I just find it to be a very nicely
polished alternative to Anki. I know that the latter is more flexible, but for
the most cases Memrise is just good enough.

Plus, the rankings bring in a whole new dimension by gamification of the
learning / repeating process. I just can't sit there watching other people
grow and getting more points than I have!

They even send you an email remembering you that you have some new items to
"water", as they call it.

~~~
bennesvig
I used Memrise and found it surprisingly easy to memorize the order of half a
deck of cards.

------
lvevjo
Repetition, not repitition.

I have tried Anki, one of the spaced repetition programs he mentions. There
are lots of different decks available. Browse some here:

[https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/)

edit: Oh and this is a dupe:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6461936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6461936)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3129937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3129937)

~~~
hhm
Anki is wonderful; I've been using it for a while. One nice feature of Anki is
that it can sync between the web, desktop and mobile versions of the app.

~~~
lvevjo
I stopped using it because I couldn't summon the time/willpower to work at it
every day. When you leave a deck for more than a day, the work starts to
accumulate like crazy and it takes much more effort to catch up.

~~~
wingerlang
I've set up a cron job to automatically open the app at 7 in the morning every
day (and to minimise all other apps would be nice but I can't find anything to
do it). I'll also set up the same functionality on my iPhone (jailbroken
devices can do this with Activator).

Maybe this would work for you.

~~~
rmc
Could wmctl on Linux allow you to minimise apps

~~~
wingerlang
Possibly, but I run OSX.

Your reply did make me take another crack at it and I got it to work. The
script if anyone is interested:
[http://pastebin.com/pC9VTzjv](http://pastebin.com/pC9VTzjv). It does do some
specific-to-me things to close apps I usually have open that did not want to
minimise.

------
barry-cotter
SRS is one of those things that make thinking about education depressing
because it makes it obvious that merely being a massive improvement over the
status quo isn't enough to get widespread adoption.

It is absolutely wonderful. I recommend downloading a shared deck and using it
to get into the habit, then building your own. There are better and worse ways
of using it but it's been a real help to me in learning Chinese.

------
robertjwebb
Spaced repetition is great, but be warned - it's no substitute for really
learning the content.

It won't let you draw connections between concepts, because the information is
presented in bite sized chunks in a way that each concept is considered
independently, not parts of a whole. I've found that I learn things much
better when I see how they are interconnected and AFAIK this is supported by
research.

For this reason, if you're considering using spaced rep for university courses
I recommend that you write your own flashcards, not use somebody else's. The
process of converting the knowledge in the course into appropriate flashcard
sized pieces is a pretty handy way of learning the information itself.

------
steveridout
If anyone is interested in using spaced repetition for language learning, you
might like to give [http://readlang.com](http://readlang.com) a shot
(disclaimer - my site). It generates a flashcard every time you come across an
unknown word or phrase while reading a book or website, and each flashcard
includes the context sentence. You can also export to other software like
Anki.

~~~
nopinsight
I checked out the site. Congrats for great work. I'll recommend it to people I
know.

There are so many language pairs you support. What sources (dictionaries) do
you use for translations? Wiktionary?

Since each word might translate differently in different contexts, do you also
select the most appropriate translation to display? It would be interesting to
discuss about the most optimal methods for that. Google Translate often gets
this wrong. (I am working on NLP/AI for language learning myself although we
will mostly use it for conversations at first.) I believe many people here can
give interesting perspectives on this hard problem (semantic disambiguation
for translation).

~~~
steveridout
Thanks!

For the inline translations I use the Google Translate API, which is
surprisingly good for words and short phrases. Unfortunately the API doesn't
provide multiple translations, even though they show them on their own web
site. Grrr.

Users are encouraged to edit translations before learning them, and I often
think it would be awesome to crowd source appropriate translations for given
contexts using this data. I'm getting ahead of myself though, I'd need orders
of magnitude more active users and development time for that to work.

~~~
nopinsight
Just an idea. For some individual words and common phrases, you can supplement
the API translation with info from Wiktionary and many freely available
dictionaries on the Web.

When you have a lot of users, providing static translation for individual
words with single meaning should also save you money in the long run, as
Google Translate API charges you for all translations the user activates.

~~~
steveridout
I did look into Wikitionary briefly but it looked horrible to use since the
data isn't stored in a structured format. It seemed I'd need to parse the wiki
markup and the formatting conventions were different for the different
languages, which would make it a tricky job to support all the languages that
Readlang does.

It made me wish for an alternative open bilingual dictionary project which is
structured and machine readable.

------
nextos
I just wanted to point out that Emacs supports spaced repetition (through org-
mode's plug-in org-drill) for those fond of keeping things in plain text.

------
madiator
Is there any SR tool that can just remind you to review stuff while taking
into consideration the date it was added? The use case is as follows: Suppose
I read some article on some neat python tricks today, if I don't review it or
use it I am going to forget it in a month. But if I note that I learnt it
today, the program should remind me after say 3 days later, two weeks later
and then probably after one year. My understanding is that Anki cannot do
this, since it doesn't know when things are added.

~~~
yepguy
Anki does know when notes are added, and I'm confused how what you're asking
is any different than how Anki normally works.

~~~
madiator
Ok I didn't know Anki knows when notes are added, thats great. Also I don't
need front and back sides. I just want a note on the front that states what I
need to refresh about.. but I guess I can just leave the back side of the
flash card empty for that, I suppose?

------
Tossrock
Only marginally related, but what the heck is going on with the text on
gwern's site? Are the per-character varying gray values supposed to convey
some kind of information?

~~~
teoryn
It should be alternating lines with red, black and blue not greys, it's to
increase reading speed:
[http://www.beelinereader.com/](http://www.beelinereader.com/)

~~~
mantrax4
What a coincidence that sites using it, including the beelinereader.com site
itself, use super-tight line-height.

Thing is, line-height helps with the same issue (but without the weird
colors), so if they'd fix that, the funky colors aren't as useful anymore.

But I guess we gotta save the trees from those printing their web pages or
something.

Whatever one may prefer, I see they offer a plugin, which is a better way to
use this tech, not by random sites forcing it on us.

~~~
gwern
> What a coincidence that sites using it, including the beelinereader.com site
> itself, use super-tight line-height. Thing is, line-height helps with the
> same issue (but without the weird colors), so if they'd fix that, the funky
> colors aren't as useful anymore.

If it's super-tight, why did loosening it not seem to help?
[http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#line-
height](http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#line-height)

> Whatever one may prefer, I see they offer a plugin, which is a better way to
> use this tech, not by random sites forcing it on us.

 _Is_ it better? That seems like the sort of claim that should be tested...

~~~
hamburglar
Is it intentional that the text starts out as all black and slowly changes
color line by line down the entire document over the course of about 10
minutes, or is my android browser hitting some sort of pathological
performance scenario?

------
zhubert
I wrote [http://www.memorific.com](http://www.memorific.com) to be a spaced
repetition tool/community for software related topics.

Collaboration is easy, which was something I really wanted to see in this
space...building knowledge together (like in a class or small team context).

Personally it's helped me retain some Go language concepts as I learn.

------
yzzxy
I've been building a small-scope SRS app for my high school's mandarin
curriculum as a side project in Node. Building a simple Leitner system is
amazingly simple, and while I don't support the same level of analytics as
Anki, the effect is similar. I'm looking foward to launching later this week!

------
greenmountin
My problem with SRS is that it is useless for the first stage of memorization.
The "vocab sheet" (20 word+definition lines, on a sheet) style is much more
effective for me, and if this was available for any of the SRS vendors I would
start using it immediately.

------
lutusp
> Spaced Repitition [sic]

You know, you can just copy the title of the linked article (which was spelled
correctly). It's less work than typing, and the chance of misspelling words is
dramatically reduced.

------
edgarvaldes
Is there an option to use SRS in command line or VIM?

------
dsirijus
Repitition. Giggle.

------
mantrax4
Ok, why on earth is almost every word in this article body a different shade
of gray?

I don't like articles where I need to bring up the browser dev tools just so I
can read it.

~~~
ctidd
It appears to be an attempt to make it easier to find the beginning of the
next line after you finish reading a line. However, the effect is much too
subtle to be of use, and even if made more prominent, it would still ruin the
typographic color and generally confuse readers.

Better solutions include:

Using a more optimal column width. 50-60 characters per line is a commonly
suggested range for most media.

Using a more optimal leading (line-height). "Set solid" type (ex. 12px/12px)
is almost always a bad idea, particularly so in a long block of text.
Depending on the type, media, etc, ratios in the range of 1.2-1.8 are a good
starting point for improving readability.

~~~
gwern
> Using a more optimal column width.

[http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#max-width-
redux](http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#max-width-redux)

> Using a more optimal leading (line-height).

[http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#line-
height](http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#line-height)

------
teemo_cute
This is the reason why seminars are not good for learning. Art Markman
discusses that issue in his book 'Smart Thinking.'

Basically the human mind can only hold limited amounts of information at a
time in short-term memory. If we contemplate what's on our short-term memory,
the probability of it being stored in our long-term memory is much higher.

It's like reading blogs one after another. Later on we have difficulty
recalling what was on the previous blogs that we have read (of course there
are exceptions, for the geniuses out there).

