On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 6:28 AM, mzatanoskas <[email protected]> wrote:
> I imagine however different users will want/expect different amounts > of recall and change the way they grade the cards accordingly. I know > I have changed the way I grade the cards over time. Could this result > in an endless battle between algorithm and user, one trying to shift > the spacing to acheive a 90% retention rate and the other grading the > cards harder and harder to achieve a higher retention rate?! I don't think so. If you lie to the algorithm and say you're only remembering 89% of your cards, say, the algorithm will just shrug and move N cards up X days. If there were any endless battle, then wouldn't you see a gradual ramp up in card numbers or a bimodal distribution of well-remembered and nigh-forgotten cards or *something*? I know that not many people looked at the stats Peter distributed in a torrent last year, but nobody pointed out anything odd like this. > 2. Indeed, how do people deal with the necessity of different levels/ > types of recall required for different flashcards. For example unless > you planning on winning quiz shows, immediate recall is not required > for most "factual" trivia type flashcards, ie the exact date of a > King's reign for example. You might want this knowledge so that when > you come across about some other historical event you can put in > temporal context or whatever. However some other set of flashcards > might deal with something more relevant to you > in your immediate life and you need faster recall. Is this simply a > matter of revising flashcards more often? To a certain extent I > imagine this would be true: the more you revise a flashcard the better > and the faster you can remember it. If this is the case, would it make > sense to be able to tag different flashcards/categories with the level > of retention required, ie. instant recall, slow recall etc. This would > change the frequency that the flashcards would be scheduled at, whilst > allowing the user to still grade all their flashcards by the same > criteria, well remembered, not well remembered etc. I think this is resolved just by either loosely grading things or by adding more cards. For example, I was studying the history of Chinese technology for a while, and I graded myself much more harshly than I do now. (For example, I used to grade a card 2 or 1 if the year wasn't exactly right; but now, as long as I have the century and decade right, I'll give it a 3 or 4.) If you really want to memorize a date, then you can take measures like permuting all possible Cloze deletions. (I posted a Haskell script for this on this ML earlier if you want to see examples.) > 3. I have to say I was a little skeptical about learning anything > other than factual or vocab style little knowledge units using > flashcards. Reading the supermemo site persuaded me that a much larger > range of knowledge could be divided up and effectively remembered > using SRS. However after 6 months of using mnemosyne I'm back to being > skeptical about the actual real life effective breadth of application > of SRS. Although I have become much better at paring down wordy > flashcards to the > bare minimum it seems to me that it is all too easy to remember > flashcards answers as words or information but not as meaning. That is > to say in response to a certain cue, ie a simple cloze deletion > phrase, I can remember the word that is associated with it, but that > does not mean that I am processing the meaning of the phrase, or the > word remembered and the information recalled is basically pointless. > Recently I've noticed with some old flashcards, that I can read the > cloze deletion phrase, think I've never seen it before but when it > comes to the missing word, I'll unerringly blurt out the exact answer > without any hesitation and complete confidence. This tends to be after > very long gaps, and I have obviously remembered the flashcard very > effectively, but it is a meaningless memory. If you are memorizing the letters in context, and not the meaning, you need more flashcards, and you need them to be hard enough that you can't memorize them. Suppose you have a '___ is not bar' / 'Foo' flashcard. Eventually you memorize the three letters 'Foo' and forget the real meaning. Oops. The problem is that you only had 1 flashcard. You should have had '___ is not bar', 'Foo is not ___', '___ is quux', 'Foo is ____'. What's easier to remember, 'Foo is not bar and is quux', or 'Foo, bar, foo, quux', etc.? Do you understand the principle? When I'm adding assembler or Scheme flashcards, I try to add multiple variants on each code fragment, which differ subtly enough that unless I actually understand and can parse them, I am just guessing - the flashcard whose answer is 'false' looks almost exactly like the flashcard whose answer is 'true'. You just need to come at the skill or knowledge from multiple directions. See my discussion of how one can learn 'skills' (like multiplication) via flashcards: http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/9aufn/ever_wanted_to_analyze_860mb_of_spaced_repetition/c0reso2 -- gwern -- 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]. 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