On 6 December 2012 20:26, pharmtech <[email protected]> wrote: > > For me (with Anki 1.2) cramming worked very well when it employed SRS- > style ordering and spacing. I might review 20 times per day, with > cards coming due in 10 minutes to 10 hours. My performance fed back > into the scheduling, influencing relative order and spacing between > cards. > > That's definitely not SRS (corresponding to the forgetting curve, > which is measured in days). But, it was a million times more effective > than typical "cramming" the same material over and over again. It > leveraged the SRS's ability to focus me time on what I needed to see. > My time is finite, and I could spend as much as possible reviewing > only the cards I was having the most trouble acquiring and retaining > (short term). > > Yes - an SRS program's ability to schedule intelligently within cramming sessions, even without the actual SRS part, is certainly an improvement over more traditional cramming.
Perhaps even more beneficial is that it forces you to perform active recall, as opposed to the passive recall that might be more common in "manual" cramming. It's very well established that active recall is massively superior to passive learning - it's better to even give people a test without any feedback whatsoever, than to let them re-read their notes! Of course we probably all agree that spaced repetition is immensely better than massed repetition (cramming) in general - at least over "some" timeframe which is probably more than a few days. What I'd really like to see is some scientific study that asks the question: what minimum timeframe is needed for spaced repetition to beat massed repetition? My intuition is that it's pretty short - maybe only a few weeks. If all other things are equal (i.e. test subjects spend exactly the same length of time per day either using an SRS in cramming mode, or in spaced repetition mode), not only do you benefit from the inherent superiority in spaced repetition in terms of long term memory formation, but also from the more pragmatic fact that you have more time to spend on new material, since you're not wasting time by repeating the same "known" facts over and over. But of course, our hypotheses won't help much... empirical testing is needed :) It seems like it's already accepted that this is a valid tactic. For > example, Anki 2 now uses a more isolated "learning mode" with sub-day > "steps" which transitions (abruptly, IMO) to traditional SRS day-sized > intervals. > > It seems like this topic is often complicated by definitions. > Efficient based upon circumstances (alternatives to spending time), > and timeframe (short-term performance or long-term mastery). > > It's an interesting topic because I think everyone's describing much > the same thing, just from different perspectives. > > -- 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.
