Given Hebbian learning - neurons that fire together wire together - I’m convinced that mixing everything is superior. Single deckĬurrently, I have decks organized by topic and subtopic. Mnemonics, at least the method of loci, are a bit better in this regard, as I can think myself to a place if I need to retrieve something. With the right cue, I can recall it, but it’s not as if I can just sit down and brain dump every single one of my memories. The main limitation here is the general unavailability of a piece of information. I might ask, “How is this concept different from that concept?” Or how a concept explains something from my personal life, or what an idea is reminiscent of. I’m not aware of any silver bullet for this problem, but I now construct more cards that enforce links between knowledge. The biggest problem with Anki is the tendency for cards to become disconnected, so that a lot of knowledge is only available with the right cue and, even then, it’s a sort of impoverished thing. The repetition makes an image representation of a concept more available mentally than its equivalent in words. As long as it captures the main idea, it’ll do:Īs an unintended consequence, my thought itself has shifted towards more imagery. In a pinch, I also make crude drawings of my own. Google image search is one of my first stops. I find, at least for my sort of mind, that most of understanding something is learning to visualize and manipulate it mentally. Now, I lean on images as heavily as possible.
How it emerged, how to invent it, what it’s for, and so on. My emerging perspective here is that it’s important to understand all the context of an idea to really know it. Of course, it’s best to know all of these. (See also this post.) It’s easy to memorize that QuickSort has a lower bound of O(n lg n), but better to know why it has such a lower bound, and even better still to understand why comparison-based sorts can’t be faster than O(n lg n). Why questionsĬards that answer the question “Why?” are more valuable than factual cards. When I started using Anki, I worried that I’d do the wrong thing, but decided that the only way to acquire Anki expertise was to make a lot of mistakes. This month, I created my ten thousandth virtual flashcard. If you don’t know what Anki or spaced repetition is, start by reading gwern’s excellent introduction. Anki Tips: What I Learned Making 10,000 Flashcards Sat, Apr 5, 2014