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Effective learning: Rules of formulating knowledge (1999)

(www.supermemo.com)
159 points swatson741 | 1 comments | 01 Sep 25 14:43 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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hereme888 ◴[01 Sep 25 17:06 UTC] No.45094504[source]▶
Too bad Piotr Wozniak (inventor of SuperMemo) is such a hermit and uncompromising of his lifestyle choices, that most of his life's work was eventually superseded by open-source solutions (Anki + FSRS).

I had tons of material in SuperMemo for years. Gave up and fully switched to Anki.

At least I'm thankful for his spaced-repetition algorithms. Also, his articles restored my love for learning and helped me confirm that school was an insane waste of time and resources.

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steve1977 ◴[01 Sep 25 19:11 UTC] No.45095654[source]▶
Last time I checked, Anki was nowhere near SuperMemo in regards to incremental reading features. Especially not with FSRS.

SuperMemo is actually almost the only reason I still keep a Windows VM.

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gobr ◴[01 Sep 25 22:39 UTC] No.45097236[source]▶
Do you use Incremental Reading? I've tried many times but I don't see the point in it, probably never got it.

Anki way makes more sense.

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hereme888 ◴[01 Sep 25 23:30 UTC] No.45097545{3}[source]▶
Exactly. Incremental reading was touted as some ultimate productivity/pleasure hack but it's impractical for the real world were humans have to synchronize with each other's calendar. It may work for Piotr because he doesn't have a schedule to follow, at all.

When I need to read and learn, it needs to happen within a timeframe. Not "some day" when it shows up in my queue again.

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1. steve1977 ◴[04 Sep 25 05:52 UTC] No.45123978{4}[source]▶
That's usually not a problem. You can always schedule the reading of an element manually. And if you do that for the first repetition, it will not have any negative impact on the algorithm.

You can also put stuff in something called "pending queue" and then just pull it from there once you're ready for it.

Only for the subsequent repetitions the algorithm will take over. This is like reviewing notes basically.

Also, you can manually advance repetitions if needed, for example before an exam.

It works very well for me and I constantly have to (and want to) learn lots of stuff.