I admit that most of the above is an overreaction to a problem I've given myself: I've been fanatically absorbed in Chinese study for the last seven months, and while I've made great progress, the rate can't be sustained. I might consolidate for a while.
I have a big idea for you. I suggest you could skip to the last paragraph first if you'd rather avoid my unpolished verbosity below. About #1, above (This is about language, and especially relevant to my scenario of language learned from a graduated series of textbooks in which later lessons subsume earlier ones. I know your program is much more general than this, and other people use it all sorts of ways.): If I can show that all of the information on some subset of my cards, all of which are at intervals above some minimum, is present in composite form in some lesson or text I've studied, and if I can prove that I possess it now as language (by passing a "review scheduling" card that tests this whole chunk), then "graduating" from those cards looks reasonable, to be replaced by this scheduled reading/listening of the whole. We know the principle of atomic-data flashcards. But what I'm saying suggests a new theory of how information should be managed over time... leading toward the big, hard to flashcardize qualities of real language. Let's see: A subset of less-composite-data flashcards *should* be condensed into a more-composite-data flashcard as soon as come criteria are met. This would build toward "review assignment" cards (in a separate category to avoid interfering with your schedule of learning *new* things), like this: front "This month, read War and Peace (in Russian of course)" back "Did you understand everything to the standard that you demand of yourself?" At that point, you don't need the 50,000(?) atomic cards that it would break down into. You could declare yourself done, with a yearly reading. Corollary: the more composite, the less the interval should be stretched, leading asymptotically toward no-stretching, pure maintenance. Corollary: the more composite, the more time should be allowed for the card to avoid interfering with the normal reps of new cards. That means fewer of these cards per unit time, ultimately requiring let's say a button to indicate that you've started on the assignment, giving you the permitted day, week etc. to complete it. These cards would be "in progress", awaiting their grade. From: *learning* atoms, To: *maintaining* chunks of real language. Just as a software tool could chop up a book into atomic cards, a software tool could monitor the learning process and re-condense, letters into words, words into sentences, etc., as justified. (Chop up the book recursively down to letters or characters, storing the intermediate results in a database. Do the audio too!) Integrated into the flashcard program and automated, total card number would continually fold downward into fewer more complex cards with lower ef, until your flashcard displays a link to your favorite bookstore to fetch this month's assignment! A practical, partial alternative that acknowledges these principles and could be implemented now is this: Every time I correctly answer a composite card, every atom present on that card would have *its own* card's interval reset, from today, probably even incremented, because I just saw it, and knew it. The presence of these cards would be irrelevant then since their intervals should become astronomical! The list of its atoms, compiled when the composite card is made, could be stored like tags with the card. This would be huge, and is why increasing card-complexity should be sought. There you go. On Jul 25, 2:22 am, Peter Bienstman <[email protected]> wrote: > On Saturday 25 July 2009 01:40:07 am querido wrote: > > > I contributed a tiny bit of code a couple of years ago. Now I have > > 1.99 running with virtualenv, etc., and hope to produce algorithm > > plugins. > > Be my guest! > > BTW, by using grade 5 more often, and holding off from adding new cards for a > while, my rep count is down from 175 to 130 a day :-) > > Peter --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mnemosyne-proj-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
