[Mbioguy]

Few people have tried Anki (a free alternative to SuperMemo). Even fewer have tried its add-ons, which is where it truly shines! Vanilla Anki is mostly good for text flashcarding, with the phone app helpful for making use of those little bits of downtime throughout the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-4xOe79epU&list=PL3MozITKTz...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzBoDe3PgAc&list=PL3MozITKTz...

Glutanimate has taken Anki to a whole new level. He created a painless UI for occluding any part of an image and making Anki flashcards out of it (Image Occlusion Enhanced). I used it to efficiently create and memorize thousands of anatomy flashcards. Ordered lists can be a real pain to memorize, but when not missing steps is crucial (as it is for medical OSCEs), Cloze Overlapper has worked very well.

Anki lets you share your decks with others, and medical students have collaboratively created very high quality study decks for studying for the various STEP exams.

To be honest, I was always a fairly mediocre student. Big-picture concepts and figuring things out on the fly, no prob. But I've always struggled to nail down bits of information long-term or learn sequential information, meaning calc and ochem required inordinate amounts of time. No longer the case. Spaced repetition plus visual/text/auditory learning is a recipe for success.

The possibilities here should not be underestimated. Folks on Hacker News have talked about the value of information commons, and this right here is the next best example behind Wikipedia I have ever encountered. While quality collaborative decks exist for things like medical school, learning languages, and more, none exist specifically for the program I am in (PA school). I am currently creating my own with the goal of it being the core of a quality collaborative deck. I am using Gephi to spatially organize concept maps for diagnoses complete with incidence and strength of associations, when such information is available. I then export these maps to Anki, use Visual Occlusion Enhanced to block out the information I want to recall, and voila: time-efficient first-time learning and long-term retention.

[gbacon]

I built an Anki deck to study for the FAA instrument written test and the oral exam portion of the instrument practical test.

Tips and best practices:

* Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge[0]

* A list of Anki tips and suggestions that [a medical student] wrote[1]

* Anki Guide for Medical Students[2]

* How to make high quality Anki cards quickly[3]

* Anki Tips: What I Learned Making 10,000 Flashcards[4]

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

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/4ocdyb/a_lis...

[2]: https://drwillbe.blogspot.com/2011/08/anki-guide-for-medical...

[3]: https://managingmedicine.org/2013/05/14/how-to-make-high-qua...

[4]: http://rs.io/anki-tips/

[snerbles]

FYI, your link [1] was culled by the moderators of /r/medicalschool.

[mcguire]

Ok, any idea why?

[gbacon]

I wonder if the person who posted deleted that reddit account.

[snerbles]

Normally their post contents remain with [deleted] as the user name. They could have also used a mass deletion script prior to deleting their account.

[ljsocal]

have you made your FAA decks public? Would like to see them, thanks!

[gbacon]

UPDATE: My IFR deck is available on AnkiWeb:

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2105122272

[capedape]

Just a heads up, you can google Flashcard decks for flying exams. I've seen them out there and you can import into Anki.

My question: I have hundreds text files that are solely highlights I want to remember. I’ve made my own cards (for other things) for years and know that’s a best practice, but for this I want to automate the process more. Anyone have a suggestion to format long texts into many cards as quickly as possible? Script, Keyboard macro, or just general method?

[yorwba]

Anki can import and export cards in a plain text format (with fields separated by tabs), which should be easy to generate with a script.

[gbacon]

I will upload them to AnkiWeb.

[simias]

Maybe it's because I haven't managed to configure it correctly but I was always a bit underwhelmed by the way it works by default. If you try to learn a language you can do a bunch of cards for vocabulary (my main use case) and it'll keep flashing the words and ask you if you got it right. You never have to input the words yourself, it's always foreign -> native or native -> foreign etc... I really missed not having to actually write the translation myself, I find that it helps massively when you're learning the spelling of the words.

Eventually I dropped Anki for the (closed source and freemium) memrise and I've been using ever since, I currently have a one year streak going. When learning vocab it actually asks you to write it down, or pick the correct translation from multiple choices which makes it a little less repetitive and more stimulating. It also has a few professionally made decks for some languages which are pretty decent in my experience. In the end it works a lot better for me.

But again maybe it's anki's defaults that aren't for me, but if that's the case they're pretty mediocre defaults IMO.

[emilga]

Anki supports typing in the answer. (Here's the relevant section of the manual: https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html#checking-your-answ... )

E.g. if your note field is called SpanishWord then putting {{type:SpanishWord}} in your card template means you're prompted to type the answer. (And Anki will show you a diff between your answer and the content of the field, so you can see spelling mistakes immediately.)

The pics from the Anki android app on the Play store shows how it works: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki...

[Jeff_Brown]

Couldn't you just write the word the first time it's shown to you?

[mr-turtle]

Anki is fantastic! Although I've always felt that the lack of collaboration on public decks is a huge missed opportunity.

> I am currently creating my own with the goal of it being the core of a quality collaborative deck.

You can do that? How does one contribute to a public deck on Anki?

[ace_of_spades]

Thank you for your insightful comment.

Specifically your last part sounds like an awesome approach to learn and remember. However, I see a lot of difficulty in sharing the resultant cards and getting comparable outcomes. You probably need to set up the connections first by creating the cards. Simply having access to the cards may lead to people not taking the time and effort to bootstrap the connections by learning about them in a comprehensive manner. Also some organization that works for you may not necessarily work for some other person.

Nevertheless, I am very much intrigued by the potential of sharing knowledge this way. I just think it's not a clear cut and easy problem as one might imagine at first.

[thefuzz]

relevant Twitter thread about spaced repetition: https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/95776322945477427...

[jerf]

I would echo something that thread said, and was a misconception I had: "Learning" an Anki card, even memorized for months at a stretch, does not mean you "know" the contents of the card in the full sense. You'll still have to use it in real life for that. I find there is still a noticeable pause the first couple of times I need something as I mentally have to "pull up" the card.

However, the transfer can be wildly better than trying to swallow a big pile of Facts (TM) solely by using them. Despite being superficially more work, Anki-memorizing+using can get you to mastery on topics with much less net time spent than simply straight-up using, as long as it is a task that involves a lot of "brute facts" of some sort.

This misconception wrecked my first couple of attempts to get into it, because I did not get the results I thought I should get. Better understanding has yielded better results.

[simias]

Yeah, it's definitely something that supplements your studies, it shouldn't be the main focus. It pays off when you read or hear something and you think "wait, I know that word, it means... <thing>". At first it's a bit clunky but it does speed things up massively in my experience.

[emmanueloga_]

I think you are commenting on: https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/95776421515816140...

An interesting thought would be to have some interactive anki cards.

I don't know about the details, but it could be something like, don't show me a card "how to list files using bash", show a command prompt, and if the user types a command that list files (tree, ls, find, etc.) approve the answer. Maybe ask "list files as many ways you can remember), etc.

How would this translate to other kinds of knowledge? Probably not easy, but not every card would have to be interactive, just the ones that make sense.

[bocklund]

> as long as it is a task that involves a lot of "brute facts" of some sort.

I want to use Anki so badly. I have bought the app on iOS ($25), but I haven't been able to get it to stick. I think the hardest part is to distill things into brute facts.

It seems like most the facts are trivial and obvious if you know the concepts and I haven't been able to map my concepts to something on an Anki card that would be useful for spaced repetition. IMO concepts are not something that you "forget" once you have done all the work of putting the pieces together in your head.

I would love to hear success stories of people using spaced repetition successfully for things that aren't facts.

[simias]

Can you explain more precisely what you want to memorize exactly?

I've only used spaced repetition for learning languages myself (vocabulary but also conjugations and declensions when applicable) and it's true that it generally works better when you can easily match something 1:1 to make both sides of the card. When you can't easily reduce something to a very simple and understandable expression it can get quite abstract and difficult to use.

For instance if you're making a deck to learn French you could make a card that says "une chaise -> a chair", no problem here. But now if you want to translate the word "encore" you have a problem because it can mean a bunch of different things in English: still, yet, even, again... Here making a card can create more confusion than nothing in my experience. It might be better to include it in short sentences demonstrating one specific meaning at a time, like "il est encore en retard" -> "he's late again".

Same thing for grammar: "je pense" -> "I think". Easy. "tu pensais" -> "you (sing. inf.) thought (imperfect)". Not so easy. For these things spaced repetition can only get you so far, you really need to practice the language "in context" to make it stick.

[edanm]

> Few people have tried Anki (a free alternative to SuperMemo). Even fewer have tried its add-ons, which is where it truly shines!

As a very long time Anki user who only very recently started using plugins, I agree with this.

I mean, I think vanilla Anki is already awesome and gives you tons, and I've used it that way for years. But yeah, there are some amazing plugins which can take things to whole other levels, especially in very visual fields.

[cmrx64]

As another vanilla anki user, what are your favorites?

[edanm]

Image occlusion and Cloze Overlapper, for sure.

Glutanimate makes great videos that introduce the plugins (and he writes/maintains some of them, including imo the above two).

But the basic idea is: Image occlusion - allows you to make a "cloze" using an image. I.e. you select 3 parts of an image to hide (by drawing something over them), and then you get 3 cards, one with each thing being hidden, then having to be revealed. That's the basic gist, and it's amazing, especially if you're studying something with lots of drawings (I usually don't, but e.g. anatomy is useful. And even I find uses for it).

Cloze overlapper allows you to easily create something that's recommended in the famous SuperMemo learning article. Let's say you want to memorize a song. You write the lines of the song, then the plugin generates cards which go:

Card 1: Song name [...] (you have to know the first line)

Card 2: Song name

The first line [...] (you have to know the second line)

And so on. So you're getting the context of the last line of the song, and then you have to know the next line.

This is the "standard" way to learn something like songs, poems, etc, but also useful for other ordered lists of things. Incredibly customizable btw (how many lines to show, whether to show line after as well, etc).

Other fun things: Image Resizer - simply a button that allows you to paste a smaller version of an image.

Advanced browser - makes the browser way more awesome (specifically, it gives you the option of sorting by arbitrary columns).

Note: Anki 2.1 just came out, and most plugins aren't compatible yet. So it's a real question whether it's worth upgrading if you rely on plugins.

[capedape]

What I’d really like to see are the plugins available on mobile. Most days are spent looking at the laptop screen for too long and grinding out an Anki session on the same laptop often takes a large dose of willpower. Doesn’t stop me from loving it and using it, I just use it less than I would.

[yellowcherry]

I'm using DroidAnki on my phone as part of my efforts to learn Mandarin. It took a bit of time to figure out how best to configure it, but now that I have it tuned to my liking, it's a great tool. It's not the only tool I've been using, but it's one of the most helpful.

[idoescompooters]

Yeah I've got the iPhone version of the Anki app. There's a good Mandarin deck called Spoonfed that gives you sentences instead of just words. Much better. But, by far the most effective way to learn the language is to practice with natives. Which I have been doing for a few weeks and the results are amazing.

[peterburkimsher]

I've been learning Mandarin for about 3 years now. In April 2017 I released my own program to add spaces between words: https://pingtype.github.io

The best spaced repetition method for me is listening to music. If I watch a film 5x or see a flashcard 5x or read a comic 5x, I'm bored. But I can listen to the same song 20x and still like it.

[Splendor]

Can you link to the iOS app? I see several in the App Store and I'm not sure which one to try.

[yorwba]

Download links for all versions of Anki can be found on https://apps.ankiweb.net/ (And yes, Anki for iOS costs money.)

[Splendor]

Thanks!

[mcguire]

Any tips on how you configured it?

I'm about to take another stab at Spanish and vocabulary is one of my perennial weak points. I've played with Anki before, but it didn't seem as useful as I have been told.

Is it possible to get DroidAnki to have notices telling me that it's time to study something?

[anamexis]

I highly recommend the book "Fluent Forever" by Gabriel Wyner. He lays out a spaced repetition centered approach to language learning, and specifically around using Anki for learning language.

[zhdc1]

This is the first I've heard of Glutanimate. Quite frankly, it looks absolutely awesome.

[swaggyBoatswain]

Glutanimate's youtube videos are the best for anki, bar none. I've watched all of them already, they've been very helpful for setting up my anki workflow

[_greim_]

I tried it a while back, but got distracted because the UI seemed clunky and half-baked. Anyone know if that's changed in the past several years?

[komali2]

Nah, hasn't changed much at all. The UI is kind of "Linuxy" in my mind - on the surface fairly ugly and confusing, but becoming more and more powerful as you learn more about it.

[jammygit]

I didn't realize Anki had decent addons until your post. I accidentally just learned how to use cloze mode too after checking these out, so thanks for sharing!

(created an account just to write this)