On 24 August 2012 21:59, Gwern Branwen <[email protected]> wrote: Interesting posts!
> So I don’t agree with the extent to which Scott thinks aggressive > learning makes spaced repetition unnecessary. Moreover, he’s overlooking > the “spaced” part of the concept: that *not* repeating, and allowing the > context to vary, is an equally important part of the equation. > Not only that, I think Scott is overlooking the important fact that SRS is a method of _active learning_, where you are challenged and must produce the answer, rather than passively seeing the same concepts repeatedly. It's well known that active recall is an extremely effective part of learning which is often neglected in day-to-day study. SRS systems allow you to apply active recall in a systematic and time-efficient way. And as the Ryan's article points out, the "spaced repetition" part helps to transfer knowledge into your long-term memory more quickly, systematically and reliably than "aggressive" learning alone. Actually completing the journey of getting knowledge into LTM is another critically important element of learning which is also badly neglected by many curricula. Especially when students, lacking structured learning tools, often resort to last-minute cramming, and can pass their tests but forget even some of the basics afterwards. I'm sure we've all been there! That's not to say, of course, that SRS learning should _replace_ normal study and exercises, but it's an amazingly powerful tool that can go alongside it and rapidly pays back the time invested in it (many times over) by systematically helping you to remember the things you choose to study. Even if it didn't help you learn better and faster (which, of course, it does), there is a comfort factor in knowing that none of the things you really wanted to learn will "slip" through the cracks and be forgotten. This comfort factor alone would be easily worth the time spent in adding cards and performing daily reviews, IMO. Remember taking foreign language classes in school and realising you'd forgotten 80% of the words you'd "learned" a couple of months ago? Never again, thanks :) -- 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 https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
