Spaced Repetition Systems Help You Remember More in Less Time

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Spaced Repetition Systems Help You

Remember More in Less Time

How many flash cards could you memorize in half an hour a day?How many could you keep memorized for a year and a half? 100?200? Maybe 500? How about 4,167? Thats how many flash cards afree software spaced repetition systems helps me keep memorized.

I dont have to review four thousand flash cards everyday. I only

need to review a handful, sometimes less than a dozen, because theprogram predicts when Ill forget each flash card and makes mereview it before I forget. How can a program predict when Ill forgetsomething? The program, or rather its author, knows about theforgetting curve, a principle that people forget new memories fasterthan they forget old memories. If you just learned the Pythagoreantheorem today and you dont review it again, youll probably forgetit by next week, but if you remember it from High School, youll

probably remember it for at least the next year.

You tell spaced repetition systems (SRS) how well you remember afact each time you answer its flash card. You grade your memory.The program uses your grade to predict when youll forget that fact.Each time you remember something correctly, the programschedules it further away. For example, if you tell it you learned thePythagorean theorem today, it makes you recall it tomorrow; if youanswer correctly, it makes you recall it in six days; then in 12 days;

then 20 days; then 30, 50, 100 days; continuing forever. Within thefirst 18 months, you may only need to review each card 12 times.For 4,167 flash cards, thats 50,000 reviews which sounds like alot but its an average of only 90 reviews a day to keep over4,000 flash cards memorized.

Thats how I reviewed just three flash cards a minute, for thirtyminutes a day, for 18 months, to memorize over 4,000 flash cards. I

dont intend to stop. In thirty years, with the same routine, I fullyintend to memorize and keep memorized over 100,000 flash cards.

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Dr. Piotr Woniak wrote SuperMemo, the first commercial spacedrepetition program in 1987, and he continues to develop and sell itfor Microsoft Windows today. This article introduces two freesoftware programs, Mnemosyne and Anki, that both use slightlymodified versions of that 1987 SuperMemo algorithm.

Mnemosyne

Mnemosynes author named the program after the Greek goddess ofmemory and mother of the muses, but the name also belongs to aEuropean species of butterfly which Mnemosyne uses as its mascot.Use your favorite package manager to install the mnemosyne

package. If you dont have a favorite package manger, use Synaptic

in the System -> Administration menu.

Go to the Applications -> Education menu and click Mnemosyneto start the program or type Alt-F2 to open the application launcherand type in mnemosyne. Before you try Mnemosyne, you shouldread the following warning.

By default, Mnemosyne collects anonymous statistics about howeffectively you memorize your flash cards. The programs author, anassociate professor at Ghent University in Belgium, plans to usethese statistics to improve Mnemosynes card scheduling algorithm.Ive looked at the statistics and they dont include any material onyour cards nor anything about you, the user, but you may preventMnemosyne from sending these statistics by going to the Settingsmenu and clicking the Configure Mnemosyne option.

In the configuration dialog, uncheck Upload Anonymous Logs if

you want to stop the uploads. Investigate the other options whileyoure there. I like the option to increase the font-size for charactersthat use a non-Latin (non-English) character set. Setting this optionmakes reading Japanese and Chinese flash cards much easier. In theRepetition Process section, the number of grade zero cards to holdin your hand sets the number of un-memorized cards you want toreview over and over again until you memorize them. Click Ok tosave your new settings and exit the configuration dialog.

Click Deck -> Add Cards to display the add cards dialog. The dialoghas three fields: category, question, and answer. If you plan on




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entering cards from many different subjects, I suggest you enter eachsubject as a different category. Later, Ill show you how to hidesome categories and make a custom flash card deck. A checkmark

box labeled Add vice versa too sits beneath the Answer field.Marking this box creates a second card for every card you enter. The

second cards question field contains the first cards answer and itsanswer field contains the first cards question. Complete the card bychoosing its initial grade; I discuss grades in the next section. Ifyoure not sure, choose grade zero. You can tab between the textfields and press Ctrl+0 through Ctrl+5 to add the flash card with thecorresponding grade.

Exit the Add Cards dialog to return to the default learning and

review mode. In the learning mode, Mnemosyne displays questions,one after another, until you learn them all. When you know theanswer or realize that you dont know the answer, click the ShowAnswer button. Besides showing the answer, Mnemosyne alsoactivates six buttons numbered zero through five below the answer.Buttons zero and one indicate that you didnt remember the answeror got it wrong. If you select either, Mnemosyne will show you afew other unmemorized cards and then display this card again.Buttons two through five indicate how well you remembered theanswers. If you select any of them, Mnemosyne wont show you thiscard again until at least tomorrow. Mouse over the grading buttonsto display a tool-tip describing what each button indicates.

You can focus your studying on one particular category or group ofcategories by going to Deck -> Activate Categories. By default,Mnemosyne activates all categories. You may not find this featureuseful if you always memorize cards within minutes of entering

them, but if you get a backlog of cards to memorize, this featurehelps prioritize your study.

Mnemosyne and all spaced repetition systems predict when theyoull forget the answer to a flash card and schedule a review of thequestion shortly before then. Mnemosyne schedules cards daily, soyou should run it daily. Dont worry if you miss a few days here andthere Mnemosyne adapts. Every day you start Mnemosyne, it firstshows the questions it thinks youll forget in the order it thinksyoull forget them. Answer each question the same way you did

before. Each time you answer correctly, Mnemosyne schedules the




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next review of the question further into the future. After usingMnemosyne for over a year and a half, it schedules some of mycards over 500 days into the future.

As you continue using Mnemosyne, youll probably find mistakes in

your cards or ways to make them easier to memorize. Edit thecurrent card by going to Deck -> Edit Card. Find other cards bygoing to Deck -> Edit Deck. Delete the current card by pressing thedelete key; Mnemosyne asks you to confirm the deletion and, if youdo, it deletes the card permanently.

Mnemosyne doesnt limit cards to question and answer pairs or plaintext. When adding cards, right click on the question or answer field

to bring up the context menu. In that menu, the three-sided optionlets you make foreign-language flash cards with a written form,pronunciation, and translation. When you add a three-side flash card,Mnemosyne generates two real flash cards. Mark the vice versacheckbox to generate four flash cards. The Add image or Add Soundoptions do what you expect. In either the question or answer field,you can enter standard HTML markup including formatting andtables. You can also render mathematical formulas with LaTeX byenclosing the formula between "and".

You can import flash cards in several formats: SuperMemo,CueCard, two text formats, and Mnemosyne XML. You can exportyour flash cards to text, CueCard, and the Mnemosyne XML format.You can upload and download flash cards formatted for Mnemosyneon the Mnemosyne website. To import or export flash cards, use thecorresponding option in the File menu.

Mnemosyne displays text statistics about your deck and the currentcard when you go to Deck -> Show Statistics. Some people findflash card statistics motivating and some people use them to limithow much time they spend reviewing cards each day.

You can add new features to Mnemosyne using plugins downloadedfrom the Mnemosyne website. Most plugins come as zip files, soyou need to unzip them and put them in the Mnemosyne plugindirectory, .mnemosyne/plugins.




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Anki

Ankis author wrote Anki to help learn Japanese, so he gave it thename of the English pronunciation of the Japanese word formemorizing. Install the anki package using your favorite packagemanager. Start the program by selecting Anki from the Applications-> Education menu.

Anki doesnt upload any statistics automatically, but you canoptionally keep a copy of your deck on Ankis online server. Thismakes it easy for you to use Anki on multiple computers and letsyou use Ankis online version. Start by setting up an account on theAnki website. Then go to Settings -> Preferences, click the Save &

Sync tab, and enter your username and password.

You can change other settings in both the Preferences dialog andfrom the Settings menu. I suggest you restrict your changes to thePreferences and Font & Colors dialogs until you get used to Anki.Well adjust the Current Model settings later in this article.

Select Add Items from the Edit menu to start adding cards. In Anki,you dont make flash cards directly. Instead, you enterfacts andmodels, and Anki combines them to make flash cards. The Modeldrop-down selects the rules Anki follows to make your cards; thedefault, Basic, builds simple two-sided cards. The text fields letyou enter facts. In the Front text field, enter the cards question; inthe Back field, enter the cards answer. You can create a secondcard for every card you enter using the Cards drop-down. In Basicmode, this drop-down works exactly like Mnemosynes vice versacheckbox; in other modes, it does more.

In the final text field, enter zero, one, or more tags for this cardseparated by commas. Tags let you disable groups of cards. ClickAdd to add the card to your deck; you dont need to choose an initialgrade; all cards in Anki start out as unmemorized. You can tabthrough the fields and press Control+Enter to add the card to yourdeck. Icons above the text fields let you add formatting, audio,graphics, and LaTeX math formulas.

Close the Add Cards dialog to return to learning mode. Ankidisplays the word Learning in the bottom right corner of the




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screen. Read the question and click Show Answer when you knowthe answer; then grade the card. Unlike Mnemosyne, Anki has onlyfour grades: Again, Hard, Good, Easy. Beneath each grade, Anki

prints the amount of time until youll next see this card if you give itthat grade.

You can focus your study by disactivating unimportant cards andprioritizing important cards. Go to the Deck Properties dialog in theSettings menu. The Suspend Cards field contains a list of tags. Ankihides any cards with these tags during learning and review. Thethree priority fields Very High Priority, High Priority, and LowPriority prioritize other tags. Anki shows cards with priority tags

before other cards in the learning and review cycle.

By default, Anki only lets you learn 20 new cards each day. Thisprevents you from becoming overwhelmed tomorrow, but you canadjust the threshold in the Deck Properties menu. When you finishlearning new cards, Anki tells you how long you have to wait untilthe next review. If you dont finish learning all the cards, Ankiinterrupts your learning for the review. Anki schedules reviews inincrements of minutes not days like Mnemosyne but youshould still review your Anki cards at least once a day. When

learning or reviewing cards, you can edit the current card by goingto Edit -> Edit Current. You can also go to Edit -> Edit Deck to editany card in the deck.

To get three-sided or even more advanced cards, edit Ankis models.Add a new model in the Add Cards screen by pressing the green plussign next to the Model drop-down. Anki comes with models forlearning Japanese and two Chinese dialects, but you can add another

Basic model and customize it. After adding the new Basic model,click the Edit Model icon next to the plus sign. Give the model anew name and set up the models parameters. On the Fields tab,setup the parameters of each fact; on the Cards tab, setup how Ankishould generate cards using the facts. If this model accepts morethan two facts for each question, extra fields appear on the AddCards screen.

You can import cards as a tab or semicolon separated file,

Mnemosyne deck, Cue card deck, or Anki deck. You can exportcards or facts as a tab separated file or Anki deck.




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Anki shows many more statistics than Mnemosyne and includesseveral graphs. You can access all of these statistics from the Toolsmenu. After you use Anki for several weeks, the graphs will clearlyshow you Ankis use of the forgetting curve.

Contrast and Conclusion

I dont think it matters which program you choose: both Mnemosyneand Anki help you memorize the greatest amount of information inthe least amount of time. But both programs require a seriouscommitment. You cant take advantage of the forgetting curve or theSuperMemo predictive algorithm unless you run the programeveryday. If you make that commitment, even for just a few minutes

everyday, youll soon have hundreds, then thousands, of new facts atyour disposal.

David A. Harding began using Linux in 2001 and quickly became aLinux Professional Institute certified system administrator. Hisarticles have appeared in over a dozen publications and he has givenover 50 presentations about Linuxincluding two SoftwareFreedom Day keynotes. Dave always loves to hear from readers [email protected].

To the extent possible under law, David A. Harding has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights

to this article. This work is published from the United States.

Any original program code in this article is also unlicensed for redundancy.

Last edited Thu 24 Feb 2011 02:51:08 PM EST


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