
Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge (1999) - jasim
https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules
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BeetleB
I tried using Mnemosyne (a Linux program that uses the same algorithm) years
ago when I was in school, and did not find it effective. It was a pain to
enter the cards, and a lot of my material was mathematical. Also, you needed
to be _really_ consistent. Take 2 weeks off and the algorithm behaved poorly.

Looking back, I think the problem was the lack of documentation on what to
expect. There are always questions of how many cards should you do in one
session, and how you should rate them.

A few days ago I started again, this time using org-drill. As with everything
org-mode related, the experience is _much_ better this time round. When it
presents you a card, it has all the LaTeX rendered, and all images showing.
Let's see if I don't get sick of it this time round.

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pixelperfect
Using a spaced repetition system for math has never worked well for me. It's
useful for memorizing mathematical facts (for example, the mean/variance of
various statistical distributions), but over time my intuition will fade, and
I'm left parroting facts, having lost the understanding of why they are true.

In my experience, spaced repetition systems excel when I can create cards that
take 10 seconds or less to answer. So they work really well for something like
language learning. But it's difficult to reduce mathematical arguments into 10
second chunks．

~~~
BeetleB
What you say is generally true for mathematics, but it can help for the
basics: Definitions of terms, etc. Basically, my goal was/is to memorize the
facts one really _should_ know without needing to look it up. For example,
I've learned statistics at least thrice in my life, and beyond the very
basics, the material doesn't stick. I think it's good for retaining a minimum
amount of knowledge that you can use in the field any time you need it. Things
like the recursive rule for the Gamma function, or that pairwise independence
does not imply mutual independence (although a better flashcard would ask you
to recall an actual counterexample), or what each probability distribution is
useful for (I don't think I'd ever want to memorize the mean/variance,
though).

I agree with you that overly relying on flashcards will take away the
intuition, which is critical in fields like mathematics. At the same time, one
can use flashcards in addition to other methods. It's not as if using one
approach impacts your ability to learn via other approaches. Also, I think one
can be clever in how they use them for mathematics. A lot of theorems rely on
a certain key trick or two, so I think it makes sense to have flashcards
asking what the trick is. I think flashcards are great for memorizing
counterexamples, as well. Or heck, even regular examples. Depending on the
branch of mathematics, knowing these is immensely helpful (e.g. in analysis).

Having said all that, I'm not using it for math presently.

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emilga
> I agree with you that overly relying on flashcards will take away the
> intuition, which is critical in fields like mathematics.

Can't you just write a card that specifically asks you to give the intuition
behind some concept?

E.g. "What's the intuitive interpretation of the gradient of a scalar field,
\nabla \phi?" Answer: "\nabla \phi is a vector that points in the direction of
greatest increase of \phi."

Etc.

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solarkraft
Archive.org has it:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180906202316/https://www.super...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180906202316/https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules)

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TheJimMcKeeth
The link works, but not if you follow it from here.

[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rul](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rul)

~~~
pure-awesome
You're right; clicking it fails but copy-pasting works.

Weird, why would that be?

EDIT: Well, copy-pasting opens the site but not the article.

~~~
TheJimMcKeeth
For some reason it got truncated

[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules)

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niea_11
Another link to the same page that works:
[https://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm)

~~~
pure-awesome
Doesn't work for me.

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jammygit
This is an alternative link I've been using this week personally:

[http://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm](http://super-
memory.com/articles/20rules.htm)

I just wish the mobile supermemo version let you export your cards. I left
supermemo a year ago for anki because of that - don't want to get locked in
when I have thousands of cards.

The windows version apparently does allow exports, but it seems separate from
the web version and does not run on Linux.

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treerock
"Do not learn if you do not understand"

Seems strangely backward to me. Understanding is my end goal when learning.

~~~
kuerbel
Learning is not the same as studying, but if English is not your mother tongue
you can easily mistake one word for the other. e.g. in german it is the same
word. I assume it was written by a polish native speaker. Apparently in polish
they also only have on word for it - uczyć.

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jamesholden
Page isn't working for me:

[https://i.imgur.com/vr9zLtH.png](https://i.imgur.com/vr9zLtH.png)

~~~
kk58
Same here

