[formerly_proven]

There's a word for this in German: Bulimielernen (bulimia learning). I.e. learning a large number of facts in a manner that you can barf them up exactly once (in the exam) and forget them immediately after.

Naturally, this only works on knowledge-base exams, not skill-based exams (e.g. math). This also shows up in the results: math exams generally seem to have worse grades than other exams, and math exams seem to have lower thresholds to pass (e.g. 25 % vs. 60 %).

[ZephyrBlu]

I'm curious why you think maths is exempt from being 'gamed' per se, by this technique.

I'm also not sure where you're getting "math exams generally seem to have worse grades than other exams" and "lower thresholds to pass" from.

At university I specifically remember some of my friends not understanding the calculus they were doing _at all_, yet they could still answer questions because they rote learned the technique.

[cyphar]

Spaced repetition is not the same as cramming, and spaced repetition (if applied correctly) leads to long-term memory formation.

It's not perfect for every type of information, and there are some aspects of memory (most notably contextual memory) which can make it less effective than one might like. But it definitely is more useful than just for exam cramming...