2010/1/13 Michael Campbell <[email protected]> > Interesting. Perhaps it's just a matter of perception, but I thought the > whole point of these algorithms is more or less FOR the "leeches". If it's > hard and tends to monopolize your review time, they should. That's the > idea, right? Until they stop being hard? And if they practically never do, > then perhaps they shouldn't and the spacing algorithm is doing its job. >
No, a leech means a piece of information that is formulated in an ineffective way (generally a single card that could and should be replaced by a set of much simpler cards that collectively carry the same information). For example, a beginning user might make a single card which tests the user on the full conjugation of a verb in a particular tense (or even multiple tenses). Such a card would include far too much information in one place, would make it too easy to fail (since passing the card requires getting every piece right), would discourage the learner and would waste a lot of time needlessly. Every time you fail the card due to one single bit being wrong, you have to repeat the card again many times, including all the other unrelated bits that were correct. This is a gigantic waste of time and effort. Learning leech cards is like trying to perform delicate surgery with a sledgehammer, bashing and bashing wastefully. It's nothing to do with difficulty of the source material - it's simply down to poor card-creating choice. Making good, efficient flashcards is a craft. It's really worth reading the "Twenty rules of formulating knowledge" article on the Supermemo site - http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm - it explains things better. > I get the possibility of a card being badly formulated and discouraging > points, I guess, and maybe I just don't have enough cards to make it a big > deal but I relish the leeches; those are specifically the ones I want to > focus on. I guess the whole thing just sounds like a "math is hard, let's > go shopping" simile. > Nope, it's more like a "learning a language painfully in 10 years is hard, let's learn a language easily in 2 years" simile! Any automated tool that can find possible inefficiencies in your deck is worth using - I had a card in my Chinese deck once, a sentence card which was 3 or 4 lines long and really felt like a horrible chore to read and translate, since I always got one little part wrong and had to repeat the entire thing repeatedly. When I realised that I had spent a total of over 30 minutes looking at that single card, which totally wasn't worth that amount of time compared to simpler, more granular cards, I deleted it. <shrug> To each their own. > I think pretty much everyone prefers faster learning over slow learning :D Oisín--
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