A vote against spaced repetition

If there's enough demand on LW I can write up a summary.

Please do.

Good information! This is really more "a vote against flashcards" than "a vote against spaced repetition", though, at least given your concrete issues with flashcards. Spaced repetition is an algorithm for figuring out when to review material that you want to memorize; flashcards are one thing that spaced repetition is applied to, because it's easy to stick flashcards in a computer. As far as I know, no matter what object-level mnemonic devices you're using, spaced repetition is still strictly better than "when I feel like I'm forgetting" or "right before a test" or any of the other obvious review strategies, if you can deal with the cognitive load of scheduling things, or get a computer to do it for you.

Is there space for some sort of SRS that allows for input of the more helpful types of memorizations that you listed (pictures, venn diagrams, etc.)?

Here is what I now use in place of flashcards:...

How long have you been using these alternatives to flashcards? How likely is it that you are still in the honeymoon phase?

The significance of a rise in serum αFP

I think that's mainly an example where it's not straightforward to make good cards.

Basically I would get a list that rise in serum αFP does X, Y and Z. Then I would make cards:

Does higher or lower serum αFP does X?
Does higher or lower serum αFP does Y?
Does higher or lower serum αFP does Z?

I personally formulate the cards a bit differently but that's the core.

Ven diagrams/etc, to compare and contrast similar lists. (This is more specific to medical school, when you learn subtly different diseases.)

I do have Anki cards that contain Ven diagrams. At the beginning the Ven diagram is shown empty and the user is asked where a given item belongs on the Ven diagram.

As answer card the whole Ven diagram is shown and the item that the user had to place is highlited with a special color. I haven't yet automated the production of such Ven diagrams but I think that's part of the future of Spaced Repetition Learning.

Your mileage may vary, but after seeing so many people try and reject them, I figured it was enough data to share. Mnemonic pictures and memory palaces are slightly time consuming when you're learning them.

If you want to learn information the day before a test and get a good score then Anki won't help you for that purpose. That's not what it's made for. Anki exists to prevent you from forgetting information. There a good chance that you will forget your memory palace information in a year. Especially because memory palaces have a reuse problem. If you use the same palace for multiple lists you get conflicts.

Your mileage may vary, but after seeing so many people try and reject them, I figured it was enough data to share.

I would guess most of those people violate various of Wozniaks rules. If I look at the most popular Anki deck about medicine that's on Anki shared deck list I fully understand that learning that way isn't optimal.

Can we please taboo "memorize" here? It seems to me the problem is conflating two different mental activities: 1) developing the ability to recall specific discrete responses to stimuli, and 2) gaining cohesive understanding of the component pieces of a "big picture", and the connections between them. It seems not at all surprising that the best approach for each would differ, with spaced repetition being good for the former and things like venn diagrams, mnemonic pictures, and memory palaces being good for the latter.

Concrete examples for clarity: In the first category would be vocabulary learning, e.g. mapping the stimulus 国 to the response "country". In the second category would be, say, abstract algebra: learning the group axioms and how they relate to the semigroup axioms in one direction and the abelian group axioms in the other direction.

What would be a good introduction to memory palaces? What did you use?

Memory palaces. I recently learned how to properly use these, and I'm a true believer. When I only had the general idea to “pair things you want to memorize with places in your room” I found it worthless, but after I was taught a lot of do's and don'ts, they're now my favorite way to memorize any list of 5+ items. If there's enough demand on LW I can write up a summary.

How good is your ability to internally visualize? I've been putting off investigating memory palaces for my own use because I find it very difficult to use a mental paintbrush.

Anki is good for trigger -> response sorts of memorization, but requires a bit of hacking for other things. Combining mnemonics with spaced repetition, I've heard, is ridiculously powerful. I've got a card with three sides, Trigger, Association, and Response, to try and strengthen the trigger -> response bond. I've set it up so I've got Trigger -> Response, Association -> Response, Trigger -> Association and Trigger -> Association and Response cards. If anyone wants me to share this format, I'm happy to do so.

ETA: Combining this with habit-training techniques is, I predict, potentially powerful.

Here is what I now use in place of flashcards

This sounds like a false dilemma. Maybe on their own, flashcards are not very effective, and on their own, mnemonic devices work well enough (for you). But this is not enough to conclude that flashcards are not useful after you adopt mnemonic devices. Maybe the additional effort (of also using spaced repetition, in addition to mnemonic devices) doesn't significantly improve long term retention, or maybe it does.

I have used Anki almost daily for the last six months.

Mostly, I use only images to represent concepts.

I think you postulate a dichotomy where none exists.

Yes, text only memory cards are, for many things, not good enough.

Then you say mnemonic pictures are what you use.

Guess what? That's how I use Anki! I mostly use Anki with mnemonic pictures!

There's an Anki Deck on "The 20 rules of formulating knowledge [in SRS]". It's highly recommended for frequent Anki users. Here's some examples:

• Start with the big picture
• Refer to other memories
• Use mnemonic techniques
• Use imagery
• Use graphic deletion (e.g. for diagrams, anatomy etc.)
• Avoid sets ("contraindications of Metronidazole" would probably be a set) ...

So it seems that many of the points you mention are addressed if you use Anki effectively. Your post makes sense though: In my impression 1) most people are not using it as effectively as they could 2) it's not obvious how to use it effectively 3) effective use of SRS takes time and practice. There's certainly also cases where it's just not always the best technique.

Article: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm Deck: http://alexvermeer.com/download/How-to-Formulate-Knowledge.anki

PS: I second the post on memory palaces, sounds really interesting!

What about using them to learn a foreign vocabulary?  E.g., to learn that "dormir" in Spanish means "to sleep" in English.

Another interesting case against SRS.

From a Psychology textbook I read (and other sources, including here): "Elaborative Rehearsal" is a kind of reviewing that improves retention: instead of just rereading atomic "facts", it's more effective to look for meanings and connotations, to ask "why?", and to see how it fits in the bigger picture. Having a good understanding of principles and relationships makes transfer easier, i.e. it makes it more likely that you'll be able to use what you learnt in different contexts (i.e. in daily life and not just on LessWrong / when studying psychology).

Anki seems pretty bad at all of those, so something that puts more emphasis on the global structure of knowledge (like a Memory Palace / Method of Loci) may be better.

On the other hand, I mostly remember the above because I put it in Anki and review my decks every day :)

I would still consider spaced-repetition to memorize some of the more rarely-used notes on the treble and bass clef

I actually had this exact idea for learning the notes + saxophone fingerings for the treble clef. I was systematically going through Yamaha's interactive chart, making screen shots and slowly putting them into anki cards during boring, otherwise low-attention demanding meetings.

I never finished the job -- I just learned the notes and fingerings by directly practicing the saxophone. I think this is a bit of a parable of one of the challenges with flashcards: if you use the knowledge on the reg, you'll retain it. If you don't, you won't, but if you're not using it, why do you need it?

The intersection of stuff that's rarely needed by very high value to know off the top of the head, seems generally small.

Have you tried Anki's image occlusion and Cloze deletion feature. You can fit entire diagrams or texts that give you the "whole picture" all the while blanking out certain portions of it to test yourself. Anki is great. Admittedly, basic flashcards do have their limitations. 

In what program can I create my own unique flashcard repetition algorithm? How?

Spaced repetition is still good for knowledge you need to retrieve immediately, when a 2-second delay would make it useless.

Not sure about other people/situations, BUT I personally have found, in classroom settings relating to math and CS theory, that a 2-second delay can impede understanding. Especially when a definition relies on a combination of well-chunked previous concepts, which is especially the case when dealing with math.

An interesting comment to this article from the creators of spaced repetition

http://supermemopedia.com/wiki/A_vote_against_spaced_repetition

As spaced repetition and flashcards are a technique and tool respectively it is (to me) obvious that they are useful for certain kinds of circumstances. Flashcards really are useful only when you want to associate 2 things to each other (for example a word and its translation) and might not be the best way to build an organized knowledge of a subject. Because of that I wouldn't use them for that purpose in any case.

Thank you for pointing out an area where they fail, that was useful information.

A question to the community: Do you really believe as much in spaced repetition/Anki as the post suggests?

Hm. But when we recall something, we refresh all the connected memories as well. It gives you the whole picture. You may be referring to some specific kinds of flashcards, the ones that only make you recall one particular fact, and that depend on some particular association. Here is an example of flashcards that I created to prepare for my uni course: http://www.memcode.com/courses/18. For example when I answer to this question: 'How is one bel defined?', I can't help but recall:

1. dB formula (10log10(P1/P2))
2. that it only refers to power change, or variables proportional to power.
3. that decibel is 1/10 of bel
4. how are logarithms defined

Ans still it can be answered in about 3 seconds. I recall the big picture in a few seconds. I can't imagine how any other technique may have a comparable effectiveness.

Is this against spaced repetition as such, or against flash cards?

For me the value of Anki (or my own custom program that I wrote a while back) is as a review-scheduler, not as a quizzer.

Anki became useful for me after I stopped making flashcards on the run, while I was learning the content. Now I make flashcards only from what I already know from memory, two or three days after I've learned it through other methods, without ever reading anything while I'm typing into a text file that I'll then import to Anki ( their GUI is too slow and cumbersome for me ).

Spaced repetition came out of scientific studies on the forgetting curve; these weren't studies on the learning curve.

A simple substitute strategy for using spaced repetition: Say fact usefulness has a power law distribution: some facts you are going to look up 10s or 100s of times, others not that frequently. Say it's hard to predict which facts are going to be the ones you look up 100s of times. If that's true then by using SR you're going to create a lot of wasted cards for facts that you thought you'd look up 10s or 100s of times but in fact are pretty useless. Instead what you could do is every time you want to look up a fact, before looking it up, try to recall it from memory. Research shows that trying to recall facts solidifies their memories much better than looking them up, so over time you will come to have all of the facts you most frequently need at your mental fingertips using this strategy (a bit like microprocessor cache management).

One of my brothers is a physics undergrad at Caltech. He described the Caltech curriculum as having a "fire hose" feel where the professors throw one thing after another at you in rapid succession, trusting you to reconstruct that knowledge later as necessary. From what I've heard, MIT has a similar approach. This seems opposed to a spaced repetition approach where you make sure each chunk of knowledge is a solid, permanent block before proceeding.

One possibility is that the "fire hose" approach does get you spaced repetition for core concepts that you end up seeing in many different ways over the course of your study. It's also possible that what's best for elite engineering students doesn't work well for everyone, or that elite engineering students are going to succeed no matter what approach you take, so curriculum design doesn't matter much.

What i fail to understand is "Are you sane?" Using ANKI for three years! Mastery for the sake of Mastery is stupid, and not recommended. Mastery for purpose/reason is required. What is a swiss army knife? A swiss army knife is so powerful because it combines a lot of tools and pushes them into one cool gadget. Our mind is that swiss army knife, but you are trying to fill this swiss army knife 1000 times with only one type of weapon i.e. a thousand cork screws or a thousand simple knives, that defeats the purpose of the swiss army knife i.e. our brain. Spaced Repetition System is one of the 1000 systems out there that exist in the world to maximize your memory. The japanese have tons of techniques, which might be inferior than SRS for words but might be extremely efficient when you are trying to remember pictures! i.e. visual memory boost. Similarly Indias have a system to attack math and formulae, from their ancient texts called Vedic Mathematics. There is Benjamin Franklin's method that he has developed to master writing. There is prousts method to master writing. If you believe that SRS is somehow this magic technique that you can use to remember every damn thing in this world forever! Sorry to say that you are extremely wrong! SRS works but only to some extent, i.e. to help you make associations quickly! So the question you have to ask is "Why do I need those associations?" Our brain does not remember things that you want it to remember, our brain remembers things which it perceives are useful, emotional, shocking, intriguing. You brain remembers things using feelings and emotions. With ANKI you are only forcing it to remember after a certain time with an emotionless character, are you adding smell to that word? i.e smelling a flower are you adding taste to that word i.e. chewing a gum - does somebody slap you when you open up that specific word - using the sense of pain and touch to enhance your memory. Not only does you brain remember the moment when you are humiliated before an audience but it will replay it randomly on multiple occasions out of sudden 10 to 20 years into the future - WHY? because the amount of trauma that a specific incident has caused, made the brain remember it vividly, so that if anything similar to that situation were ever to arise in your life in the future, your brain will recreate this situation and make sure that you don't repeat the same mistake and go through the same pain. So the people who fail at public speaking for the first time, will remember it for a long long time and will become frightened of the stage. So to imprint something upon the brian, the word must have an emotion/ a feeling attached to it. That is one other technique available. There is one more technique available, You remember the word better with application, if there are situations where you use the word, then with each usage, the word becomes your own, i.e. it moves into your personal inventory and soon you will find reasons to use that word. That is how the brain works. Thus my advice is use ANKI as a repository i.e. similar to a dictionary, don't try to remember the dictionary. Load all the decks which are related to your area of study and when, only when you come across a word somewhere, you pick up that word from the existing decks and move them to a new deck along with the reason i.e. the context which forced you to look at the deck in the first place, into the DECK and that context is the link that binds you to the word! Without the context, the word merely become an orphan lost in your mind and you don't have an anchor to recollect. These anchors of touch, context, smell, experiences, emotions, etc... are the key to memory. But, if at any point the brain feels "WHAT IS THE POINT" i.e. if the brain feels APATH attached with a word, this happens after a few months, when you see the word in ANKI so many times but it never gets used in real life ever. Then it is time to move the word into archive i.e. out of the active deck into APATHY DECK, a deck for useless words that take up your mind space but never get used and by now your mind cries about how useless that specific word has become. Thus ANKI is not a savior, it is one of the many tools in the market to help you. Take help from other tools too - Let me list a few tools for you - MINDMAPS - BLUMIND - EVERNOTE - Notetakers - Google Keep - Stickies - FLOWCHART TOOLS - EDRAW - Right tool for the right job and at the right time. Don't assume that you can keep hitting all the nails with the same hammer, depending on the size of the nail, the hammer must be changed, sometimes, often you need to flip the hammer for a screwdriver - Read these books - Getting Things Done - Fluent Forever and other productivity books to find other tools and techniques used! Don't just stick to one solution and assume that it is the only thing you will ever need ever again in your life. Do proper research about all the tools at you disposal! Sometimes you might find gems in the rough!