What if I told you that you would never have to cram for another test again? That you’d effortlessly remember pertinent information and, moreover, retain it for years after the end of the class? In fact, you could remember anything and everything you ever wanted to.
Introducing: Anki. According to its website, “Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it’s a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.”
Hermann Ebbinghaus’ research on the spacing effect demonstrated that information is better retained with multiple reviews spaced out over time (spaced repetition), rather than in a short burst (massed repetition, aka cramming). Anki, a spaced repetition software, algorithmically calculates the best time to review something. Anki is not the only SRS out there, but it’s one of the most popular and boasts a large active community. Countless others have written guides on how to use Anki like a pro, so I won’t repeat what they’ve said. Instead, I want to share some unique use cases, as well as some general tips and tricks for using Anki.
The first big use case, obviously, is for studying. I am a math and physics major, which are arguably among the least memorization-heavy science, technology, engineering and math subjects. In fact, I was once a hard advocate against memorizing equations in physics. I thought the true mark of understanding was knowing it well enough to derive equations on the spot. But intuition has a limit. As deriving everything on exams became both technically difficult and time-consuming, I turned to Anki, which saved me a ton of time studying for my electrodynamics final.
Of course, memorizing something doesn’t mean you understand it. But you can’t understand something that you don’t remember in the first place! Putting a key definition or theorem into Anki forces you to frequently confront the idea, and you’ll naturally try to understand something, if only to remember it better.
Tip #1: Anki has a big collection of add-ons that improve the experience. One of them is an add-on for importing poems and lyrics. Some other add-ons I like are Enhanced Cloze, Image Occlusion Enhanced and Review Heatmap (like the Github contribution graph, but for reviews).
Interesting facts: By which I mean any facts, really — whatever you care about, whether you want to know the linguistic history of the English language, random historic events, to recognize birds, cars or classical piano pieces. The possibilities are truly endless. I’ve gotten into the habit of making a note of anything I want to remember in my notes app and entering it into Anki when I have a chance.
Things about people you love: Their birthdays, for instance, or other anniversaries. Sure, you could just as well put these in a calendar, but I think there is some value in caring about them enough to remember them by heart. You could also remember someone’s favorite drink or food order..
Tip #2: Anki can help you create reversed cards, so you can, for instance, remember someone’s birthday given their name, as well as recalling their name when you see their birth date.
Geography: U.S. students are bad at geography, and contrary to what the schooling system will have you think, knowing generally where things are is actually a pretty useful skill.
Tip #3: Anki’s official website hosts many shared decks made by other users. Many of them are language decks, but there is also a whole section dedicated to geography. I like the “Ultimate Geography” deck because you can use the filter feature to create custom subdecks depending on what you want to learn.
Names & Faces: No further comment.
With specific use cases out of the way, there are some general advice and warnings I have for newcomers to Anki.
Memorizing something is not the same as understanding it. This is so important that it’s worth reiterating. If you’re using Anki for a class, don’t expect to understand everything magically. You still have to put in the time and effort to know something rather than to just know the name of something. The hope is that you will fully understand every bit of information that you put into Anki, ideally before the card is even created. This also means that when you review a card, do not cheat. Don’t pass the card if you know the answer but don’t know where it came from.
Delete bad cards aggressively. What are bad cards? In essence, they are those that you feel uninterested in. Maybe at one point you thought the card was important or maybe it was solely for a class and now you don’t care. Delete the card or use the “suspend” feature to soft-delete it indefinitely. The worst thing you can do is to make reviewing Anki such a chore that you never do it at all.
I found myself suspending a lot of cards from my course-related decks after the end of the semester because they weren’t important to have memorized except for the exam. A notable benefit of “suspending” these cards is that I can easily re-enable them for review if I ever need to for a future exam.
Be stingy about what you put in. In a similar vein, a lot of information doesn’t necessarily need to be memorized. Anki makes remembering things more efficient, but there is still a long-term cost for each card. Gwern Branwen, a freelance writer and researcher, wrote a comprehensive usage guide with a rule of thumb for what to use.
“If, over your lifetime, you will spend more than 5 minutes looking something up or will lose more than 5 minutes as a result of not knowing something, then it’s worthwhile to memorize it with spaced repetition,” Gwern said.
Start EARLY. You only get the easy retrieval afforded by spaced repetition if there is actually space for you to repeat. Again, taking a rule of thumb from Gwern’s analysis: “Don’t use spaced repetition if you need it sooner than 5 days.” Beyond this threshold, spaced repetition is better than cramming.
Anki’s “Custom Study” option allows you to do massed repetition as well, so you can still use Anki to cram. But it’s really far less effort and stress to make cards on a daily or weekly basis as the term progresses, so that everything is firmly locked in your brain whenever you need it.
Write good flashcards. This is a lengthy topic that 100% deserves your own research, but here is my input:
As mentioned above, don’t write things that you don’t understand.
Write in simple terms; don’t obfuscate with jargon.
Short cards are easier to remember; split big chunks of information into smaller subparts.
The commercial SRS SuperMemo has a guide on writing good flashcards, with good examples as well. Naturally, depending on your use case, some advice might apply more than others.
I feel I should mention that, despite the way I’ve emphasized complete understanding, it will be at times difficult to understand something fully even though you really want to. Maybe impossible given the time constraints, with other classes and such. An editor for this column jokingly commented: Is Anki a way of life? And in some sense it is — a commitment to Anki is, indirectly, a commitment to pursuing knowledge. Even as I tried to give practical uses for Anki, the people for whom Anki will be most valuable are, inevitably, nerds of all varieties. And deleting bad cards aggressively, or being stingy about what you put in, are both just particular instances of a more general choice that you have to make — what to care about, and what to let go.
Good luck!
MiC columnist Kenneth Sun can be found at sunken@umich.edu
The post The study app that will help you remember everything appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
Leave a Reply