p-christ (u/p-christ)

p-christ commented on Learn Exponentially saveall.ai/blog/learn-exp... · Posted by u/p-christ

Not really.

Given a fixed amount of review time per day, the largest deck you can maintain grows asymptotically over time, not exponentially.

p-christ · 3 years ago

Do you agree with the assumptions of the Anki scheduler? That each time you review a card you'll remember it for incrementally longer and longer?

If so then a fixed amount of review time per day will let you remember things for longer & longer.

p-christ commented on Learn Exponentially saveall.ai/blog/learn-exp... · Posted by u/p-christ

otras · 3 years ago

Ah OK, that makes more sense. I think my main confusion there is that getting twice as effective at spaced repetition doesn't seem to directly translate into learning more — as another comment mentioned, you're still learning the same number of flash cards in the second week, right? What really is the y-axis in the graphs?

> The post is arguing that you should do that AND spend a little bit of time doing spaced repetition, not to only do spaced repetition and nothing else.

From my perspective as a reader, I'm not sure I see either post discussing working through problems and applying your knowledge, but I do think the inclusion of that would make them both much stronger, especially since it seems like you've clearly thought about them from your comments! I do see the mention of reading + spaced repetition and the mention of memory helping math problems in the other post, but I'm not sure I see where you've explored what that active use and problem solving looks like (or how spaced repetition helps).

Again, I think this a great idea, and I don't mean to be negative for the sake of negative — you were asking for feedback on your post, and I figured I'd offer some :)

p-christ · 3 years ago

thanks a lot, your comments make a lot of sense and are really helpful!

p-christ commented on Learn Exponentially saveall.ai/blog/learn-exp... · Posted by u/p-christ

AlchemistCamp · 3 years ago

> Effectiveness of spaced repetition scales really fast / exponentially whereas other learning methods don't scale like that - do you agree?

Of course not. As I wrote, in the comment you’re replying to, I was a user and evangelist of SRS for years but eventually saw the reverse.

It’s a very useful tool for a certain narrow niche of memorization tasks. However, it’s an extremely inefficient learning method over the long run compared to reading and using information or skills in context.

p-christ · 3 years ago

Do you agree with just this part?

> Effectiveness of spaced repetition scales exponentially

p-christ commented on Learn Exponentially saveall.ai/blog/learn-exp... · Posted by u/p-christ

dekleinewolf · 3 years ago

It's not giving you more knowledge though. It's giving you the exact same amount of knowledge - you're just retaining it longer.

p-christ · 3 years ago

If you've forgotten something then you don't have that knowledge anymore. So remembering things for longer means you are effectively gaining knowledge.

It's like someone giving you $10 and then trying to argue that they haven't actually given you $10 because just a few minutes ago you had a $10 bill in your pocket but you spent it on something else.

p-christ commented on Learn Exponentially saveall.ai/blog/learn-exp... · Posted by u/p-christ

SnowHill9902 · 3 years ago

I agree that memory is (very) important for understanding but not in the way it’s purported by the article. I don’t need to remember the exact way something was written by the author. In fact, I’d argue that by focusing on literal remembering you are understanding less than otherwise.

p-christ · 3 years ago

> I don’t need to remember the exact way something was written by the author.

I agree. Who ever said you should try to remember that? Remember the high-level important and transferable information, don't waste time trying to remember information that won't help you elsewhere.

p-christ commented on Learn Exponentially saveall.ai/blog/learn-exp... · Posted by u/p-christ

AlchemistCamp · 3 years ago

To be perfectly honest, I flagged it because of the knowledge gained graph. It's a wild extrapolation.

For context, I was a big fan of SRS and even contributed to Anki back in the day! I was really into foreign language learning, had majored in one language and was learning another language in a separate language family.

I built, ran and put my heart into brick and mortar language immersion school for years. Over time, I realized both from my learning experiences and those of my students that SRS fell far short of extensive reading.

It's tempting to break things down to "units of information", as you put it your assumptions document. SRS is great for decontextualized information (e.g., memorizing all the capital cities in the world), but that's not really how language works or how the brain works for most learning tasks. There are higher-level things your brain picks up, such as collocations, grammar and shared cultural beliefs.

Over the short term, SRS can be useful for building a scaffold to work from, but over the long term, Extensive Reading crushes it on pretty much every metric, including raw size of passive and active vocabulary.

p-christ · 3 years ago

The simplifying assumption around units of information and the graphs are just to visualise the main point.

Effectiveness of spaced repetition scales really fast / exponentially whereas other learning methods don't scale like that - do you agree?

If so then over the long-run spaced repetition is always going to be extremely efficient relative to other learning methods.