
Spaced repetition - ergot
https://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition
======
Afforess
I find it very frustrating that _spaced repetition_ is the best recourse we
(humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the
number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to
write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor
annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them
today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not recall writing down at all.
Worse, some of the information has lost context: I wrote it in a certain state
of mind, certain emotional state which I no longer have and so the preserved
words on paper are missing meaning and appear alien. The situation is so poor
that it seems 20% of the material I have recorded has not even been properly
preserved from only a month ago.

I find memory endlessly frustrating; we have so many unique thoughts and
insights and we are forced to watch them circle the drain. Worse yet, most
people aren't even aware this is happening, no internal inventory has been
taken to show the poor state of affairs!

The tech community has a fixation on life extension, but I am worried I am not
even properly remembering the life I am living right now, nevermind tomorrow.

~~~
ktRolster
_I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we
(humans) have to remember information._

I've worked on this for a while. I've written several different memory
programs, for helping to review and memorize things. I have some thoughts that
may help you feel better:

In the end, spaced repetition is not what causes people to memorize things.
You can review an object over and over and over......50 times, or a hundred
times, and still not remember it. Other times, something will click in your
mind, and you'll remember it the first time, without any repetition.

My hypothesis is that repetition merely increases the chances of your brain
being in a state where it will remember the thing you are trying to remember.
And certainly there are things you can do to increase the chances of it
sticking.

~~~
Retric
Having a Memory is only half the equation recall is the other. Take a movie
you have not watched in a decade and write down what you recall about it and
how it ends. Then watch the first half and write down what you remember about
the second half. Chances are good you will be able to add a lot more details
the second time.

Spaced repition aids both parts of this so not only is the information stored
it's also easy to retrieve.

~~~
kahrkunne
I think this is a big part of the trick. To remember something you need to
practice recalling it.

------
laurieg
Spaced repetition is a wonderful tool. I came across it when I started
learning languages and have over 5000 cards in my largest Anki deck for words
and phrases.

A lot of thought is put into how to use a learners time most effectively. The
algorithm designers seem to want to optimize their software so that a student
only sees a card they are likely to be on the verge of forgetting. Because of
this, uses often fail when they look at a flashcard.

Designing like this seems to ignore spaced repetitions most common failure
mode: giving up. I think there is something especially demoralizing about
getting questions wrong or being shown you are forgetting something all the
time. I think it might even be solved by making the software _less_ efficient
but more 'friendly'. For example, giving a student an easier question that
they are unlikely to have forgotten to soften the blow of a glut of difficult
questions.

~~~
pmoriarty
My main problem with spaced repetition programs like Anki is getting the
motivation to stick with them long-term. This also dovetails in with my
problems with procrastination. I've never seen a good solution. Most of the
proposed solutions boil down to "just do it". It doesn't work for me.

~~~
summarite
> My main problem with spaced repetition programs like Anki is getting the
> motivation to stick with them long-term. This also dovetails in with my
> problems with procrastination. I've never seen a good solution. Most of the
> proposed solutions boil down to "just do it". It doesn't work for me.

If it's just one or at most three such'daily'things you want to do i had great
success with simple "don't break the chain" kind of apps - every day you
succeed in doing your task you check the box and it's marked on a calendar.
There really is a drive not to ruin this beautiful chain, and I've found
myself following through for months at a time - but then when you do fail once
and the chain is broken the motivation really takes a slump as well.

Checking in with a friend or your partner can also help. Get some mild social
accountability going and you might find yourself quite driven to follow
through.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" If it's just one or at most three such'daily'things you want to do i had
great success with simple "don't break the chain" kind of apps - every day you
succeed in doing your task you check the box and it's marked on a calendar.
There really is a drive not to ruin this beautiful chain, and I've found
myself following through for months at a time - but then when you do fail once
and the chain is broken the motivation really takes a slump as well."_

This reminds me of the big physical yearly calendar I put on my apartment's
door. It's right there in front of my face every time I go out the door. When
I first got it, I crossed out all of the days that had passed for the year,
and wrote in what was to come on important days of the year. Each day I would
look to see what was on the calendar, and cross out yesterday's day. I had
this nice long chain of crossed out boxes and written in appointments.

That worked for a while, but eventually, I stopped. Now it's been months and
the calendar hangs there, and I don't touch it. I can't fail to see it all the
time, every day I leave home, but I've just phased it out, I ignore it, and
don't even notice it 99% of the time. Sometimes I do notice it or remember
that it's there, and that I should really be crossing out those days, but I
don't actually do anything.

That's the thing about procrastination. It's one thing to know what you should
be doing, and quite another thing to do it. Tricks like "don't break the
chain" can only get you so far.

------
botexpert
I used this to memorize/train problem solving (applied to compsci problems).

I solve a problem at SPOJ [1], Codeforces [2], or project euler [3] or other
similar sites. Put it as a card in Anki and revisit it after it appears again.

Solving the problem for the first time requires some research into algorithms
and methods (took as much as 4 hours when I was just starting), and solving it
again is remembering the tools.

Nice thing is that the evaluator tells me if I'm right or wrong, or if it
takes too much time I've obviously forgotten how it's done.

I unfortunately stopped doing it as most problems take more than a minute to
solve (each needs about 10-150 lines of code [depends on problem complexity])
and I eventually had to do 10-20 per day. At a particular moment in my life I
didn't have time. I'm thinking of starting it again though as I've noticed my
coding was much more fluent.

[1]: [http://www.spoj.com/](http://www.spoj.com/)

[2]: [http://codeforces.com/](http://codeforces.com/)

[3]: [https://projecteuler.net/](https://projecteuler.net/)

------
briandarvell
I do something a little different but only because it's simpler and doesn't
really require any specific programs to use. I dump all my journals, diary
entries, notes, thoughts, trivia and miscellaneous things I would like to
remember into a giant text file. Then a few times a week or whenever I feel
like it I ask the web to give me a random # (numbergenerator.org) and that's
the line I go to in the text file and read from there. Sometimes I also just
browse around the file at random and read away as well. I don't have any
statistics on my retention rate of course but generally I think it helps me
recall things better and amongst my family and friends people occasionally
comment on my good memory and it could be this method is a part of the reason
for that. I think in principle the concept is very similar to the spaced
repetition method, perhaps just a bit more unstructured.

------
hf
I wrote a program I fancifully called 'Human Unit Tests' to aid me in my
studies (learning a diverse set of constants for biophysics). I can very much
attest to the effectiveness of spaced repetition.

But, /boy/, do you need to stay on the ball. You can't really afford a
cavalier, let's-see attitude with this (given any non-trivial amount of items-
to-be-memorized). The review process needs to be as much part of a daily
routine as workouts ... Yeah.

On the other hand, there's one reward that doesn't usually get mentioned (as
in the fine article re-submitted here[0]): the strengthening of corollary
knowledge (or coordinate terms, for the linguistically inclined).

[0] Previous submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5809762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5809762)

~~~
summarite
Can you expand a bit on the coordinate terms issue? My impression would be
that comes rather from the encoding rather than recall?

~~~
hf
Sure, I'll try to elaborate.

Suppose you're reading a biography of Huygens. You may find yourself inspired
to memorize a few of the basic facts therein. Dutifully, you feed his life's
dates, his major acquaintances and maybe a few places of importance into the
SR system of your choice. You are committed and keep repeating those facts in
ever-increasing intervals.

After a few years a random conversation touches upon the very subject. To your
_delight_ you discover that you are able to hold forth on Huygens, the man and
his time.

To your surprise (and this is my contention [and experience]), you _also_ find
yourself able to speak with some level of accuracy about tangential matter --
eg. the theories he worked on -- without ever having either added related
facts to the database or dealt with the subject matter in the intervening
years.

In other words: recall of a whole web of interconnected pieces of knowledge
may be strengthened considerably by spaced repetition of just a few of the
central facts.

In my experience there's no specific 'encoding' procedure necessary. I never
put any thought into carefully selecting facts for the spaced repetition
treatment, yet the effect usually manifested itself. So, yes, I _would_ say
it's a 'recall' phenomenon inasmuch as the brain does all the heavy lifting.

~~~
summarite
Fascinating thanks, this is a new term for me but strikes a chord.

It also fits nicely with the limited understanding we have of the recall of
information in our brains - it all comes down to context and activating the
right network (or paths) which can only be reached by activating
related/overlapping networks. So once you activate memory on a specific issue
you can more easily activate related information (or even do so without
intention as you describe). Having more easily reachable 'access points'
(strongly encoded and thus well connected information) makes it then easier to
access related information.

A corollary is that in order to remember information it's important to connect
it to previous well established memories (eg "how does this new concept fit my
own experience").

Thanks for this.

------
tunesmith
One thing I felt I discovered over time is that if you wish to retain all
knowledge you learned in a course, it's basically impossible to do so at a
normal course's pace. The courses move too fast. You basically _have_ to cram
and forget.

I based this off of a Coursera course - I made anki cards for all the new
information and made sure to review all the new cards on the day I learned
them. The review time rapidly turned into hundreds of cards per day and it
just didn't scale.

For that one Coursera course, I ended up being stubborn and limiting my pace
to what I could Anki. I ended up taking the Coursera course three times - I
passed 100% the final time, but still hadn't finished putting the last two
weeks of content into Anki.

------
skybrian
I've dabbled with this and I find the hardest part is deciding what's
important enough to memorize. Most rarely needed facts can be looked up as
needed. Commonly used information will get enough practice naturally without
spaced repetition. You have to decide what's important even though you don't
practice it naturally.

The obvious exception is learning a language. And if you're in school then
this is decided for you.

~~~
summarite
There is an amazing slightly older longform article on the creator of
supermemo (the original spaced repetition software, although the concept of
course comes from a German psychology pioneer of a few centuries ago
(Helmholtz i think?)). The guy throws his whole life in the software, eg every
news article, email, ... Is just processed with cloze scripts (= "fill the
[...]") And his aim is to remember everything. The supermemo site also has a
lot of fascinating articles written by the guy, really worth looking at if the
topic interests you.

~~~
pitt1980
[https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/](https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-
wozniak/) pretty sure that's the article you're referencing

~~~
summarite
exactly, thank you!

------
hacker_9
I used this at work; while waiting for builds to complete I would use Anki [0]
to learn all the names and locations of the countries. It worked pretty well,
but it isn't a silver bullet. I retained maybe 50% of the information.

[0] [http://ankisrs.net/](http://ankisrs.net/)

~~~
oh_sigh
What deck(s) do you use? I've been looking for a deck that ideally has one
side where there is an image of the country, and I give it the name, and
another where there is the name of the country and I click on it in an image,
but it's hard to find such a deck.

~~~
Larrikin
Some people swear that the process of making the deck helps significantly with
their ability to retain the material.

Personally I find it a waste of time and all time spent editing cards is a
waste to me. It doesn't help me. Learning traditionally (taking notes,
answering practice questions, etc) from books and reviewing with Anki is the
most effective for me.

~~~
summarite
Ymmv but when building a deck creating mnemonics for each item was really
important for me. Made it a lot slower to enter data but much more fun and
much more effective in later use.

~~~
Larrikin
I found mnemonics to really only be useful when you're in the beginner stage.
Once I got up to intermediate real world usage was much more helpful and
easier to remember since I didn't have to remember a completely unrelated
thing along with what I wanted to learn.

------
sharp11
I believe SRS is overused. The spacing effect is, of course, real and quite
important. However, it lends itself to decontextualizing what you're learning.

For example, foreign language vocabulary is best learned in context (ie., in
sentences, within conversations). That's the only way to know how it's
actually used. Otherwise, you're just learning a mapping between first and
second languages.

There are other benefits to learning in context, as well. It's more fun,
sustains long-term interest better, and these emotional benefits enhance
memory as well.

Most interestingly, there are efficiencies to learning in context. For
example, one can learn two new words in one sentence.

For all these reasons, I believe it's quite unfortunate that the first
language learning tool everyone grabs is some kind of SRS flashcard system.
And similar arguments apply in other domains.

~~~
kevinstubbs
Spaced repetition and learning in context are not mutually exclusive. [0]

Secondly, there are many many advantages to learning vocabulary out of
context. I am very interested in foreign languages, and have self-studied to
elementary proficiency in Italian, German, and Russian. Memrise is my go to
app for picking up vocabulary out of context, because it is the fastest path
to a bigger vocabulary. For a lot of vocabulary, at least for the languages
I've come across so far, there is a direct one to one mapping for the
essential things.. E.g. you can learn the word for "book", "fire", "box",
"sky", etc. out of context. Certainly, learning in context has advantageous
for improving grammar and in some situations verb usage - therefore a more
balanced approach. An easy example of the advantage of in-context language
learning is that in German and Italian, knowing somebody uses different verbs
than knowing a thing. If you were to study a verb like "to know" in Memrise,
you rely on the flashcard's definition to be thorough enough to clarify their
usages.

[0]: "A Trainable Spaced Repetition Model for Language Learning", writes about
how spaced repetition is used by Duolingo. [https://s3.amazonaws.com/duolingo-
papers/publications/settle...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/duolingo-
papers/publications/settles.acl16.pdf)

~~~
sharp11
Thanks for the link to that paper -- I hadn't seen that. I agree that SR and
learning in context are not mutually exclusive--but they're challenging to
integrate. Duolingo is not a good example -- they teach through random
sentences, out of context.

Your examples - concrete nouns - are where you miss the least by simply
mapping onto English. But I would suggest that this is the very easiest part
of learning a second language.

I think many learners underestimate how much of language is not derivable by
plugging vocabulary into grammar rules. There's so much that is just "that's
how we say it". And you need to pick that up in context.

------
cerrelio
This is the subject I tackled in grad school. It was super interesting,
because many people still believe that memorizing stuff is best if you cram
for an extended period of time. Showing them that just a few minutes of review
at properly spaced intervals leads to better memorization floored most of the
participants.

My particular research was the quantify the effects of the variance in follow-
up exposure times. I did this research 10 years ago before smartphones were
available. The participants had to physically be in a classroom in front of a
computer to get the treatment. So in our experiment's case, the effects of
variance were non-negligible and needed to be investigated. If smartphones had
been around then, we could have tested so many more hypotheses.

~~~
jessriedel
The existence of spaced repetition also shows how dysfunctional educational
systems (both public and private) are at making evidence-based improvements.
If a method with such a clear overwhelming advantage at the stated goal isn't
incorporated by schools, what hope is there that they'll make improvements
where the evidence is hazier?

~~~
michael_nielsen
One of the most cited papers in the area is Frank Dempster's paper about the
failure of educational systems to adopt spaced repetition:
[http://andrewvs.blogs.com/usu/files/the_spacing_effect.pdf](http://andrewvs.blogs.com/usu/files/the_spacing_effect.pdf)
Although the paper was was written almost 30 years, little has changed.

------
gerlv
I've tried using Anki but found it too confusing. Most features are overkill
for what I needed, plus I always forgot to revise.

Earlier this year I build a side project to tackle this problem. I've added
email notifications, made interface really simple. Only left what it is -
spaced repetition app - Endue ([https://endue.me/](https://endue.me/)). After
a month of using it, I actually implemented an add-on - Telegram bot, EndueBot
([https://telegram.me/EndueBot](https://telegram.me/EndueBot)).

Telegram Bot is super useful as you can revise without leaving Telegram and
most of my cards don't require audio or images, it's text mainly. It only
takes few minutes a day.

I've been using it for the last 6-7 months, and it helps me with dev cards.
For example, if I'm doing a project and need to google some error or
explanation on config option or whatever, I add a card after I find an answer.
So next time you have this problem instead of googling you just recall it from
your head.

There is Messenger version in progress, I should finish it later this month.

Would love some feedback on it.

~~~
Qwertystop
Looks interesting, might give it a try if I can put together the spare time to
start learning a language.

------
jurassic
I am a big believer in the effectiveness of SRS for getting a basic foothold
in a new language or subject, but I stopped adding cards to my Anki decks
after awhile because the effort needed to create high quality cards is too
high. Studying is a breeze with SRS, but inputting and formatting study
material into a computer takes too much time, especially if you want to
include images or other context. SRS works best with small atomic units of
knowledge that stand on their own without context.

I know of no better way of bootstrapping those first 2000 words of vocabulary
in a language, but beyond that I think you're much better off using extensive
reading of easy texts to build on your language foundation.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" I know of no better way of bootstrapping those first 2000 words of
vocabulary in a language"_

For me, a much, much better way has been something called Total Physical
Reponse (TPR)[1]

It basically involves a speaker of the target giving the learner a verbal
command to perform an action, demonstrating the commanded action, and then
prompting the learner once again with the same command.

For example, if a teacher was teaching English, he/she could say:

"sit down"

then demonstrate what they mean by sitting down themselves, then say "sit
down" to the student. The student would then mimick the action of the teacher,
by sitting down.

Then the teacher could say, "pick up the fork", pick up a fork themselves, and
then say to the student, "pick up the fork", and the student would pick the
fork up, etc.

This is super effective for learning vocabulary and grammar at the same time,
in context. For me, that's a much easier, faster, and more natural way to
learn than using any flashcards or spaced-repetition program.

The downside, of course, is that this is just for listening and understanding.
It eventually will have to be augmented with other techniques for speaking and
learning to read and write. But for just learning to hear and understand the
basics of a language quickly, that is the most effective technique I know.

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

------
petercooper
The first time this hit HN I did an experiment of learning the US state
capitals with spaced repetition. Within a couple of weeks, I knew them by
heart. So I stopped, and now can barely remember any. Memory is a funny thing!
The very infrequent revisiting of stored knowledge beyond the initial learning
does appear to be critical.

~~~
chillacy
If this image is correct then after a couple weeks the forgetting curve is
still fairly steep: [https://www.gwern.net/images/spacedrepetition/forgetting-
cur...](https://www.gwern.net/images/spacedrepetition/forgetting-curve-wired-
wozniak.jpg)

------
kendallpark
Med student + developer here. As one that has to memorize insane quantities of
information in a limited amount of time, I'll offer some thoughts on my
experiences with various memorization strategies mentioned (or not mentioned)
in the article.

1\. Understanding the "big picture." The idea is, if you understand the
mechanism underlying X, you can reason out Y. This works great for physiology-
type where things work in predictable ways. Do I need to memorize pulmonary
function test results? No. Because I can reason my way through the
consequences of different pulmonary diseases. However, this simply does not
work for things like anatomy or pharmacology where there are thousands of
names of things to memorize (many of which don't provide any clue in the name
itself). Yesterday I heard from a friend that worked in a related industry
that pharm companies typically pick from a list of randomly generated
syllables to choose a name for the generic of their drug. There is incentive
to pick an unsavory, unmemorable amalgam of syllables to discourage people
from buying the name brand once their patent runs out.

2\. Acronyms are sometimes helpful but mostly overused. There are acronyms for
literally everything in medicine, to the point where each new acronym runs the
risk of being noise. The most helpful ones usually have to do with ascribing
the order to things. "Some lovers try positions that they can't handle" for
wrist bones or "Oh, Oh, Oh, to, touch and feel very good velvet AH" for the
order of cranial nerves. A great example of a worthless acronym is the TORCH
infections, which stands for "Toxoplasmosis, Other, Rubella, CMV, and HSV."
That "Other" stands for the following: Coxsackievirus, VSV, Chlamydia, HIV,
HTLV, Syphilis, Zika. Super helpful... :P

3\. Method of loci. My first block of medical school, some two weeks before
exams, I bought that oft-touted "Moonwalking with Einstein" book. It was a bit
of an act of desperation. I had previously heard the author speak at Railsconf
and figured I'd give the whole memory palace a try. I read the book (well, the
pertinent parts) and spent a couple days figuring out how to encode chemical
names into a person-action-object system. Then I translated the steps of
carbohydrate metabolism into a walk around my college campus. Results? It
worked! However, it took WAY too long. I could've done the same thing in less
time by simply drawing the steps out on a sheet of paper over and over again.

4\. The testing effect. Way back in high school, my AP psychology professor
gave us reading quizzes before every class based on the studies that showed
testing improved recall more than homework assignments. To this day, I
remember more from that class than any other class I've taken, even those in
college. I wish more professors used this strategy, but it takes more time and
prep on their end. My particular medical program only tests at the end of each
block in the form giant (8-hour) cumulative exams. On one hand, it's nice to
not have to worry about balancing midterms or tests from multiple classes the
middle of our eight week blocks. On the other hand, there is no way to benefit
from the testing effect.

5\. Spaced repetition. I agree with much of what the author has to say about
spaced repetition. Yes, it works. But there are two large issues with it. The
first one is having the discipline to regularly rehearse the information.
Pounding flashcards everyday gets monotonous (and sometimes discouraging). The
author argues that spaced repetition prevents you from having to review too
much at a time. But that depends on you keeping a pretty strict schedule. Miss
a day, and you have double the cards to look at. Miss a couple of days and the
amount of cards you have to drill to catch up becomes psychologically
prohibitive.

The second issue is that flash card creation is the absolute rate limiting
step. Every flash card program that I've looked into (Anki, Quizlet, among
others) has a terrible UI. Frustrated by this, I actually spent ~100 or so
hours of my first med school block developing my own SRS program. Even with
some improvements made to the interface, flash card entry was still too slow,
to the point that I stopped using after that first block. A year later, I
dusted off my program and I added a feature that allows me to import questions
from Workflowy notes taken during lectures. This proved invaluable in studying
for my most recent exams (currently using it now). I can keep question-like
notes in a readable format on Workflowy, then do a massive import to build my
cards.

Another minor issue is that there is no way to value one fact over another.
There should be a way to mark something as high-yield so that it appears more
often. Sometimes I am faced with a decision of, "Well, I am running out of
time... I can drill these cards, or I can open my notes and try to pick out
the highest yeild information."

I have a lot of thoughts about improving upon these prohibitive issues with
SRS. I'm hoping to roll out a more comprehensive solution next year when I
have more time to code.

FWIW here's a screenshot of my current software:
[http://i.imgur.com/sVTlMvP.png](http://i.imgur.com/sVTlMvP.png)

~~~
summarite
Very interesting thoughts and my experience is very much the same!

One question: do you still remember the chemical path today (vs other similar
items)? My experience with loci is very positive but i agree it's time
intensive. From what I've read practice makes it quicker, but it is actually
this time spent and the deeper processing and linking with other information
that occurs when you use loci or most other mnemonic methods that has the
memory-strengthening effect.

~~~
kendallpark
I don't remember much of it. I think it's because the PAO system was too
complex. I can remember some of the images, but I can't remember what they
stood for. I have been able to recall some abstract things (like where other
pathways like glycogen storage intersect with glycolysis). What have you used
loci for? I was thinking I might have better luck using loci for pharm stuff.
But Sketchy Pharm exists, so why spend all that time when they'll create
scenes for me?

~~~
summarite
Shopping lists and to do's mostly, but the to do's got unattainable as they
change frequently

------
htk
When growing up, rote learning was one of my main gripes with school. Spaced
repetition is rote learning with controlled (instead of brute) force.

With time I started to respect memorization for certain kinds of information,
to the point of using it on my own vocabulary learning app[1], which is one of
the few cases where memorization seems justifiable, but one still has to put
the information to use, otherwise the info will be lost.

[1]:
[https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1126547471](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1126547471)

------
ukoki
Spaced repetition flashcard apps are the "Smoke on the Water" of developer
side-projects. Here's my attempt:
[http://cardflashapp.com](http://cardflashapp.com)

~~~
ionforce
> the "Smoke on the Water" of developer side-projects

What do you mean by this?

~~~
Rzor
That is popular among guitar players to start with "Smoke on the Water" as an
easy song to learn basic principles.

------
ajkjk
I've been using Anki to learn (English) words for a while now (I got tired of
looking up words I come across in books and then not 'learning' them from
that). I've noticed a few things:

* A short definition is harder to remember than a long, involved one. It feels like the short one doesn't give enough mental 'hooks' for connecting to other concepts.

* A word that sounds onomatopoeia-c is usually easy to remember -- a 'cosh' is a bludgeon, and I have no trouble remembering that because it sounds kinda like one - one-syllable, harsh, blunt

* Words that don't seem to have definitions related to their spelling are hard to remember -- I had the hardest time remembering the meaning of the word "prevaricate" \- 'to speak evasively, skirting the truth', because 'pre' makes no sense in it and 'vari' is not a root I've heard before, and neither has anything to do with lying

* Learning the etymologies of complicated words helps a lot, especially if it fixes the previous problem -- after learning the root 'aestus' means fire/boiling, but came to refer to the tide as the 'boiling of the ocean', I can't forget that estuaries are tidal zones of water

* Learning a story behind a word makes it hard to forget -- for instance I remember the word 'boffin' (Britishism for 'nerd') because I remember how it was used positively to refer to the war-effort researchers in Britain in WWII

* Using the word in a reasonable sounding sentence (not an idiomatic usage, 'the one way the word is ever used') helps a lot -- for instance, find a way to use the word "mores" that isn't in the phrase "social mores" and it's going to stick a lot better

* Words that come packaged with connotations are easier to remember -- for instance, the word 'lucre' means money or profit, but knowing that it usually means 'dirty money', specifically, as in money obtained via crime / sordid means, makes it way easier to associate it with a specific concept

* Talking to someone else about a word I learned makes it many times easier to remember -- for instance I gushed to a friend about the word 'psithurism', which is the 'sound of rustling leaves', and can't seem to forget it now

* Using a word in conversation / my own writing makes it far easier to remember than any amount of studying it via flash cards.

Basically it feels like the actual way to really learn a word is to associate
a big mental structure around it in my mind - to understand subtleties in the
definition; to associate it with its parts and roots and history; to have a
social memory of sharing the word with someone else; to have to do the mental
calculations to use it in my own speech or writing and to decide that it's the
best word for what I wanted to say; etc.

This is consist with my experiences learning math and physics - I can learn a
subject if I see it as a big picture, a narrative I can re-develop on the fly,
or as a package of tools that are motivated by a particular kind of problem. I
can remember an equation if I associate the parts of it with complicated
mental frameworks or detailed arguments. But reading it off the page a bunch
of times gets me almost nothing.

Cramming for a test usually means stuffing the raw text of the material into
your brain, because you don't have time to build the whole concept lattice
around it. I think that's why it doesn't work for retention.

------
nilved
I'm always happy to see new stuff from gwern. If you like his posts as much as
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