Literally speaking, yes. You could learn basketball history, statistics, official rules, and maybe things like classifications of tactics or something via Anki, but not basketball itself.
More generically speaking, maybe. A few days ago I looked into the spacing effect on motor skills question : http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#motor-skills I don’t have fulltext for all the citations yet, but it looks like there’s something there (even if it’s not as strong as spacing effect on declarative memory or language).
You can play basketball well if you repeat a dozen core motor skills with high precision 10,000s of times. It interesting to ask how you best spread out those 10,000 repetitions but I don’t think that Anki helps with that goal.
If you want to spread out your practices, you’re going to have to start somewhere. The Supermemo algorithms are as good a starting point as any unless you’re willing to hit the stacks and compare the musty motor skill studies head to head.
Spreading out 20 times of practice is a whole different problem then spreading out 10,000. In addition it’s not clear what counts as “correct” answering and forgetting something.
I think this got derailed because gwern is trying to distinguish between the spacing effect the testing effect, and Supermemo/Anki. See gwern’s literature review for clarification. In a domain where what counts as ‘testing’ isn’t clear, perhaps basketball, then you might just try to used spaced repetition, which is what gwern is suggesting I think.
Space and testing effects are different, but work well together, and Anki/Supermemo are software that try to take advantage of these effects.
If someone takes a weekly class that’s teaching dribbling every monday, then you could call that “spacing learning”. I don’t think it’s valuable to put that way of learning in the same mental category as Anki and Supermemo.
One of your studies says:
After 2 days, initial testing produced better retention than restudying (68% vs. 54%), and an advantage of testing over restudying was also observed after 1 week (56% vs. 42%).
If you are looking at driblling or throwing free throws, I don’t see a clearly distinguished testing from restudying.
If someone takes a weekly class that’s teaching dribbling every monday, then you could call that “spacing learning”. I don’t think it’s valuable to put that way of learning in the same mental category as Anki and Supermemo.
Why not, when they’re very similar and may be exploiting the same underlying neurological effects (we don’t really know the basis)?
when they’re very similar and may be exploiting the same underlying neurological effects (we don’t really know the basis)?
Begging the question? There no possible way to learn a skill that requires 10,000s of repetitions without spreading the practice over time.
Out of the many ways that people train basketball you don’t gain additional information when you get to know that someone learns basketball by learning on multiple days.
If someone tell you that he’s learning vocabulary via SRS with my more narrow definition that tells you a lot about the way he learn it.
There no possible way to learn a skill that requires 10,000s of repetitions without spreading the practice over time.
What on earth are you talking about? You can vary the spread over time—you can cram with 4 hours of practice on one day a week, or 1 hour a day for 4 days a week, and you can distribute a skill differently within sessions too in small random blocks or again cram all of one practice task into one time period.
I get the feeling you’re not even trying to understand here.
You can vary the spread over time—you can cram with 4 hours of practice on one day a week, or 1 hour a day for 4 days a week, and you can distribute a skill differently within sessions too in small random blocks or again cram all of one practice task into one time period.
As far as I understand you both of those methods would be in the same category of spaced repetition.
Begging the question? There no possible way to learn a skill that requires 10,000s of repetitions without spreading the practice over time.
As far as I understand you both of those methods would be in the same category of spaced repetition.
I just gave you 2 different ways, on different time-scales, that spacing could be applied to motor skills and to getting the most out of the 10,000s of repetition. If you visualize the spacing effect as being based on the forgetting curve, it should come as no surprise at all that you can demonstrate spacing on many time-scales (and my spaced repetition page includes citations dealing with intervals ranging from seconds to years).
I believe that, for a student, history is more about acquiring knowledge than skill. And SRS works better for the former. Where am I wrong?
Are all fields equally approachable with SRS? I am not questioning the spacing effect, but the adequateness of the software.
I agree with your second point, the inconvenience is trivial. I was generalizing from my own preferences.
That’s true. You can’t learn to play basketball by using Anki. On the other hand in most scientific fields knowledge is important.
Literally speaking, yes. You could learn basketball history, statistics, official rules, and maybe things like classifications of tactics or something via Anki, but not basketball itself.
More generically speaking, maybe. A few days ago I looked into the spacing effect on motor skills question : http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#motor-skills I don’t have fulltext for all the citations yet, but it looks like there’s something there (even if it’s not as strong as spacing effect on declarative memory or language).
You can play basketball well if you repeat a dozen core motor skills with high precision 10,000s of times.
It interesting to ask how you best spread out those 10,000 repetitions but I don’t think that Anki helps with that goal.
There might be other motor skills were a high number of repetitions aren’t central where SRS is more applicable.
If you want to spread out your practices, you’re going to have to start somewhere. The Supermemo algorithms are as good a starting point as any unless you’re willing to hit the stacks and compare the musty motor skill studies head to head.
Spreading out 20 times of practice is a whole different problem then spreading out 10,000. In addition it’s not clear what counts as “correct” answering and forgetting something.
Not inherent to the effect; you can get the spacing or testing effects without providing the right answer or measuring the response.
I think it’s very inherent to the supermemo algorithm. Otherwise how does learning without spacing looks like?
I think this got derailed because gwern is trying to distinguish between the spacing effect the testing effect, and Supermemo/Anki. See gwern’s literature review for clarification. In a domain where what counts as ‘testing’ isn’t clear, perhaps basketball, then you might just try to used spaced repetition, which is what gwern is suggesting I think.
Space and testing effects are different, but work well together, and Anki/Supermemo are software that try to take advantage of these effects.
If only there were hundreds of studies listed in http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#literature-review which demonstrate that there are many ways of spacing learning which don’t exploit feedback like the SM algorithms demand...
If someone takes a weekly class that’s teaching dribbling every monday, then you could call that “spacing learning”. I don’t think it’s valuable to put that way of learning in the same mental category as Anki and Supermemo.
One of your studies says:
If you are looking at driblling or throwing free throws, I don’t see a clearly distinguished testing from restudying.
Why not, when they’re very similar and may be exploiting the same underlying neurological effects (we don’t really know the basis)?
Begging the question? There no possible way to learn a skill that requires 10,000s of repetitions without spreading the practice over time. Out of the many ways that people train basketball you don’t gain additional information when you get to know that someone learns basketball by learning on multiple days.
If someone tell you that he’s learning vocabulary via SRS with my more narrow definition that tells you a lot about the way he learn it.
What on earth are you talking about? You can vary the spread over time—you can cram with 4 hours of practice on one day a week, or 1 hour a day for 4 days a week, and you can distribute a skill differently within sessions too in small random blocks or again cram all of one practice task into one time period.
I get the feeling you’re not even trying to understand here.
As far as I understand you both of those methods would be in the same category of spaced repetition.
I just gave you 2 different ways, on different time-scales, that spacing could be applied to motor skills and to getting the most out of the 10,000s of repetition. If you visualize the spacing effect as being based on the forgetting curve, it should come as no surprise at all that you can demonstrate spacing on many time-scales (and my spaced repetition page includes citations dealing with intervals ranging from seconds to years).
Above studies suggest it is valuable.
Do judge whether that’s true we need to find an agreement about what we mean with it.