I’m currently using it. I’ve tried it and stopped using it twice earlier. I was using it to study kanji, Lojban words and mathematical definitions, all of which was basically learning the vocabulary of a language I didn’t actually speak. After some months, I got fed up from the feeling that I was memorizing what seemed to amount to mostly nonsense when I didn’t have a routine of trying to learn to read and write the languages or trying to do math in the side. I also didn’t like the Anki interface for entering new cards that didn’t let me do card batch processing easily and the fact that the card database was stored in an opaque binary blob.
I’m currently using a text file as the card source and have a starter deck with quotations, historical dates and other fluff that’s reasonably meaningful as stand-alone. I’ve been reviewing the deck since last December, so it’s still too early to tell whether this one will last.
This was useful because I’ve been wondering about Anki for nonsense (e.g. math I don’t already sort-of know, vocab for languages I don’t know at all, etc.)
It didn’t last. I wasn’t actively studying anything and my deck was too dominated with fluff that I stopped wanting to repeatedly see after a month or two of not actively adding any material.
I’ve always had a lot of trouble with memorization of arbitrary facts. I was trying to memorize the amino acids. I tried spaced repetition (there was a pre-made anki deck) and I stuck with it on and off for a few weeks, but the information didn’t seem to really stick. I kept getting things wrong, and wasn’t able to progress to longer repetitions.
I watched 4 or 5 different videos of this type and took notes. This particular video creates visual associations between the spelling and the shape of the amino acid. A few additional videos added additional visual links and some helpful acronyms and stories.
After I had build up a sufficient network of nonsensical links to hold all the information together, it was much easier to recall and it stuck for much longer. I suspect that creating these nonsensical links and then doing spaced repetition would be a good strategy if I wanted to memorize something in the long run.
I wouldn’t bother with flashcards though—it would be better to just set a reminder to review it. It’s unwieldy to put nuanced content on flashcards anyway.
There were a few contributing factors to me stopping, but probably the biggest was a combination of frustration and ineffectiveness. In any given session I would end up with a small handful of cards that for whatever reason just wouldn’t go in. It’d present one to me, I’d ’fess up that I didn’t get it right, and then it would wait just long enough for me to forget it before presenting it again.
There didn’t seem to be any “honest” procedure for going “look, dude, I’m clearly not going to get these ones today, so stop showing them to me.”
How about just suspending/deleting them? Or setting a half-hour aside to just rewrite those cards to make them much easier? (shorter answers, cues in the question, cloze deletion, break them into several cards...)
They tended to be cards whose answers were either date ranges in periods of history I’m not familiar with, or in languages I don’t have significant exposure to. Essentially material I didn’t have any kind of infrastructure to pin the facts on.
Generally, though, if I’d go and read up on the area to develop that infrastructure, I wouldn’t need Anki.
I’ve used it for several-month periods on several occasions to prepare for exams. In each case, once the exams are done, I would certainly like to have some broad recollection of their content (especially a feel for what sort of knowledge exists in the relevant field and how I might go about seeking it out again) but I don’t care about it at the detailed level that I needed for the exams, and therefore that I put into Anki. (Anki works best for detailed stuff anyway, I find.)
I’d quite like to pick up a more long-term Anki habit where I only add stuff that I do want to know long-term, but haven’t got round to it I guess. I’m not sure where would be a good place to start without a specific goal.
I handled that by having many separate decks; especially, if there’s something that’s only useful up to a deadline (e.g. my driving code exam), or that I’m likely to stop finding interesting in the long term, or am not sure is worth learning (e.g. vim sortcuts) I make sure that it’s in it’s own deck so I can delete it easily.
The LW survey shows that most LW people who used spaced repetition like Anki quit using it after some time. I would be very interested in the causes.
[pollid:581]
Used it to learn some specific stuff but my day-to-day life doesn’t involve memorizing things that much.
And you are happy to forget that stuff now, instead of periodically reviewing the cards?
yup.
I’m currently using it. I’ve tried it and stopped using it twice earlier. I was using it to study kanji, Lojban words and mathematical definitions, all of which was basically learning the vocabulary of a language I didn’t actually speak. After some months, I got fed up from the feeling that I was memorizing what seemed to amount to mostly nonsense when I didn’t have a routine of trying to learn to read and write the languages or trying to do math in the side. I also didn’t like the Anki interface for entering new cards that didn’t let me do card batch processing easily and the fact that the card database was stored in an opaque binary blob.
I’m currently using a text file as the card source and have a starter deck with quotations, historical dates and other fluff that’s reasonably meaningful as stand-alone. I’ve been reviewing the deck since last December, so it’s still too early to tell whether this one will last.
This was useful because I’ve been wondering about Anki for nonsense (e.g. math I don’t already sort-of know, vocab for languages I don’t know at all, etc.)
Re your second paragraph: Any updates to report?
It didn’t last. I wasn’t actively studying anything and my deck was too dominated with fluff that I stopped wanting to repeatedly see after a month or two of not actively adding any material.
I’ve always had a lot of trouble with memorization of arbitrary facts. I was trying to memorize the amino acids. I tried spaced repetition (there was a pre-made anki deck) and I stuck with it on and off for a few weeks, but the information didn’t seem to really stick. I kept getting things wrong, and wasn’t able to progress to longer repetitions.
What did end up working fairly effectively was videos like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq-rWb0fmzQ
I watched 4 or 5 different videos of this type and took notes. This particular video creates visual associations between the spelling and the shape of the amino acid. A few additional videos added additional visual links and some helpful acronyms and stories.
After I had build up a sufficient network of nonsensical links to hold all the information together, it was much easier to recall and it stuck for much longer. I suspect that creating these nonsensical links and then doing spaced repetition would be a good strategy if I wanted to memorize something in the long run.
I wouldn’t bother with flashcards though—it would be better to just set a reminder to review it. It’s unwieldy to put nuanced content on flashcards anyway.
There were a few contributing factors to me stopping, but probably the biggest was a combination of frustration and ineffectiveness. In any given session I would end up with a small handful of cards that for whatever reason just wouldn’t go in. It’d present one to me, I’d ’fess up that I didn’t get it right, and then it would wait just long enough for me to forget it before presenting it again.
There didn’t seem to be any “honest” procedure for going “look, dude, I’m clearly not going to get these ones today, so stop showing them to me.”
How about just suspending/deleting them? Or setting a half-hour aside to just rewrite those cards to make them much easier? (shorter answers, cues in the question, cloze deletion, break them into several cards...)
They tended to be cards whose answers were either date ranges in periods of history I’m not familiar with, or in languages I don’t have significant exposure to. Essentially material I didn’t have any kind of infrastructure to pin the facts on.
Generally, though, if I’d go and read up on the area to develop that infrastructure, I wouldn’t need Anki.
Finding a way to save asl pictures or videos and make anki cards of them was just too hellish.
I ran a similarish survey http://lesswrong.com/lw/ith/open_thread_october_13_19_2013/9w7m but didn’t go into as much detail, so I’m looking forward to seeing the results on this one.
I’ve used it for several-month periods on several occasions to prepare for exams. In each case, once the exams are done, I would certainly like to have some broad recollection of their content (especially a feel for what sort of knowledge exists in the relevant field and how I might go about seeking it out again) but I don’t care about it at the detailed level that I needed for the exams, and therefore that I put into Anki. (Anki works best for detailed stuff anyway, I find.)
I’d quite like to pick up a more long-term Anki habit where I only add stuff that I do want to know long-term, but haven’t got round to it I guess. I’m not sure where would be a good place to start without a specific goal.
I handled that by having many separate decks; especially, if there’s something that’s only useful up to a deadline (e.g. my driving code exam), or that I’m likely to stop finding interesting in the long term, or am not sure is worth learning (e.g. vim sortcuts) I make sure that it’s in it’s own deck so I can delete it easily.