YSK: Anki (especially in FSRS mode) is an incredible learning tool if applied correctly - Lemmy.World
Anki is an open-source flashcard app for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX with versions
also available for Android and iOS. Unfortunately, iOS version costs $25, but
all other versions are free. Anki is a self-graded flashcard program / app. This
makes it a combination quiz-app + timer system. Unlike Duolingo or other
programs, Anki entirely relies upon self-grading, but this is more than
sufficient for study. Anki grabs the top cards from a deck (defaulting to 20 new
cards per day. Feel free to customize this to whatever fits your needs best).
Then each day, it grabs “scheduled review” cards + shuffles in the new cards,
and shows you them one at a time. Once a card is shown to you, you the user
click a button to reveal the other side.
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/03d3ec58-d274-47f4-8dce-5faf93ac932e.png]
After the flip, Anki asks you to self-grade yourself on your performance.
“Again” means you grade yourself as “incorrect”, and Anki will remember this
mistake. Because you were “incorrect” on this card, Anki will show you the card
again very soon.
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4bcf3470-2a27-4c20-baf0-3d44a4eea7eb.png] If
you choose one of the three “correct” scores (labeled “Hard”, “Good” and
“Easy”), Anki remembers that you’ve answered correctly, and will schedule the
card some time in the future. I’ll get to the difference of the three scores
later, but consider all three to just be “correct” for now. The precise time is
calculated based on how well Anki thinks you know the card. If you know the card
well, “Good” might schedule the card to be reviewed 2 months from now, but if
you’ve made a lot of mistakes with a particular card, then that card will likely
be reviewed 1 or 2 days from now. As such, Anki is a system of spaced
repetition. The “better” you are with some cards, the less you see them. The
“worse” you are with other cards, the more Anki shows you those particular cards
you keep making mistakes with. Timer + self-grading == you only see the cards
you’re doing bad with, while Anki hides the cards you are doing good with. The
Algorithm --------------- FSRS is a new experimental algorithm Anki is using.
There’s been 6 versions (FSRS-1, -2, -3,… and of course FSRS 6 today).
Fortunately, the overall gist has been the same for all 6 versions. Alas, its a
lot of blogposts and technical math that’s far too nerdy for most people
https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The-Algorithm
[https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The-Algorithm]. For
the math nerds who want to learn the algorithm, study away. But I’ll attempt to
do a simpler “translation” FSRS is simply three pieces of memory being applied
to each and every “card” in your Anki decks. Every single card will try to
figure out “R”, “S” and “D”. R is the probability that you’ve forgotten a card
each day. The longer a card goes without being shown, the worse-and-worse “R”
gets (this is the value Anki uses to determine when to repeat a card to you, it
wants to show you a card before you’ve forgotten, but after enough time that you
had a chance to forget, defaulting to 10% chance of forgetting).
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7c474897-d4bd-4d1e-91f6-eef96a7b154b.png]
Every single card tracked by Anki has this “forgetting” curve, primarily defined
by the “R” aka Retention variable. The theory is: if you show a card too often,
you never really test your long-term memory. Furthermore, its too much extra
work to review so many cards. By waiting days, weeks, or months before showing
you a card again, Anki saves you time by not overly-reviewing cards you already
know the information of. Furthermore, studies have shown that showing you
information “right as you are forgetting about it” is the best way to remember
(!!!). Any sooner, and you really aren’t learning too well, but instead just
temporarily holding things in your short-term or medium-term memory. “S” stands
for Stability. The more “stable” a card is, the longer Anki-FSRS thinks it can
stay in your memory memory without review. Most “new” cards are assumed to be
forgotten about within a day by default. However, as you get the card “correct”
over-and-over again, Anki-FSRS will increase stability, thereby causing the
longer review intervals. (Maybe showing you a card once every 3 days, then 7
days, then 1.5 months, then 3 months…).
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5cbe4ac8-1a4c-4f88-a3b7-e9f69066ea6d.png] “D”
stands for Difficulty. The more times you get a card wrong (ie: when you click
the “Again” button), the worse Difficulty gets. Anki-FSRS remembers that some
cards are harder for you to remember… in particular the ones you keep getting
wrong. Even if you get a high-difficulty card correct multiple times, Anki
“remembers” that you have been forgetting this card, and will show it to you
again sooner. Ex: by default Anki will mature a card within 7x correct answers
in a row. However, if a card is “difficult”, Anki will keep showing you that
card 10x, 15x or more, knowing that you need the extra practice. Or in more
math-nerd terms, “Difficulty” is the derivative of stability. The
change-of-stability is determined by the “Difficulty” of a card. Hard / Good /
Easy ------------- Hard / Good / Easy all count as correct (ie: increases the
stability of Anki-FSRS), but will do different things to your Difficulty score.
“Good” is the default, and Anki recommends that users hit the “Good” button 80%+
of the time. Lets pretend that a particular “Good” answer will result in 1-month
timer for a particular card… “Easy” basically is telling Anki that you don’t
want to practice with this card anymore (ie: low-difficulty card). After
clicking “Easy”, instead of taking a 1-month timer… Anki will likely choose a
1.5-month or 2-month timer on the card. “Hard” is telling Anki that you want
extra practice with this card. It increases difficulty, despite increasing
stability. You’ll see this card again more-and-more in the future. Instead of
1-month timer, Anki might show you the card again within 2-weeks. Where Anki
fits in language learning --------------- Anki was originally developed to help
its original programmer learn Japanese. Its not an end-all be-all app however.
Anki is only a piece of any language-learner. You must also buy grammar / theory
books, as well as write regularly in the new language… speaking and listening
and more. Nonetheless, “Anki” is your cudgel. A brute-force method to try to
force vocabulary words into your brain through raw force. You’ll likely never
gain mastery of the words through Anki… but you can at least become a beginner
and learn how to start reading. There’s literally thousands, if not
tens-of-thousands of words you must learn to become proficient in a language.
And that’s spelling, grammar usage (gender / der/das/die in German, or maybe
conjugation rules and pluralization rules), definitions and more!! In all cases,
Anki can be used as a way to force this information into your brain, getting it
ready so that those words can “begin to be learned” when you watch TV, listen to
a foreign language podcast or hear those words in a song. Yes, Anki isn’t
enough. But Anki is a great tool to get you started. And getting started is
sometimes the hardest step for many people.
