The whole point is the algorithm [1] which how Anki schedules your cards. It is based on Supermemo's [2], and improved a lot over the years, so I think it's the most optimal from all of the SRS software's out there.
Also I think Anki has a very simple UI, not sure how people can find it complicated. You just add cards, and by review you press a button, that's all. Cards are just HTML, but you can edit them with the built in WYSIWYG editor.
Anki is great for learning programming languages!
See the Janki method [3] and another blog post [4] how to use it effectively. I found the last one especially helpful, and started learning Programming languages based on that. It works great.
You can also learn linux commands, whatever.
People also asked for sharing cards. It is very important to make your own cards progressively and learn from those, because you know what you need to emphasize for the info to stick. Just use small information on every card, use your own terms, and it will be much easier to learn, compared to some random deck you downloaded.
Is see in this comment and its answers, "most optimal", "more optimal".
An algorithm is optimal, not more, not most, just optimal.
For the case going here, you will have difficulty to prove any optimality, since the process involves humans. Efficient would be a better term than optimality.
developer of http://fluxcards.de (beta) and fluxcards android app (hobby) here.
Anki's spaced repetition algorithm is quite good and I definitely plan to boast on using a better one just like brainscape.com does but in the end, more important than which algorithm to use is to use spaced repetition at all. It just allows you to learn 20 times more with 20 minutes of time per day than I ever could back at school and far too few people know about that. If you never tried, please do it for a week or better longer as the effect kicks in only after at least some days of training the system.
In the end the actual spaced repetition algorithm used is not all that important, as long as easy stuff vanishes while hard stuff stays around.
The SRS algorithm uses scoring prioritization instead of intervals and I've found it to be more optimal than Supermemo/Anki.
I was an Anki desktop user for over 8 years, but I always became overwhelmed by the number of reviews due that would accumulate if I didn't stay active with the app almost every day (review hell). I've found the priority SRS model much easier when studying in small chunks (5-10 minutes at a time, 2-3 times a day).
Question: are there disadvantages to spaced-repetition or memorizing in general? Could it be that by memorizing new things efficiently you forget older things, or that other abilities deteriorate?
For learning languages, I used to make my own flashcards and then search audio that contained the word.
Then I discovered that there are apps with pre-filled cards that already have the audio such as MosaLingua (http://www.mosalingua.com/en).
I've been doing the GRE vocabulary decks in Brainscape on my iPhone and I like the algorithm. It seems to be a variant of the Leitner Algoritm with 5 buckets. I'm enjoying it.
Medical student here. I've tried many flashcard programs (StudyBlue, Quizlet, gFlashcard, MentalCase, and more), and Anki is by far the best for my needs.
One thing that puts Anki in an orbital beyond the other programs is the ImageOccusion editor add-on [1]. This lets you screenshot an image, draw rectangles over labels within that image, and then generate a flashcard for each label. This works insanely well for learning anatomy.
I remember about a month ago where I had two hours to learn the names of all the tracts and nuclei inside of the brainstem for a readiness quiz. It took about 10 minutes to create flashcards for them all, and an hour to memorize. I passed the quiz. Days later fellow classmates were still struggling to remember the same information.
I used Anki for French and am currently using it for Spanish. It's TERRIFIC. It's the best method for brute-force memorization of vocabulary and conjugation. While it's a bit lengthy to set it up, the creation process actually helps with the memorization.
Remember to only use photos where you can, dont use english words in it. The whole key is to skipping the "translation" step in your brain. Learn by thinking of the action, not by thinking of the english word and its translation. Getting rid of that "lookup" step is the key to getting good at learning a new language.
As for using pictures only: there are studies that show that pictures and mnemonics improve recall, but AFAIK there are no studies that say that using your native (or another known) language is bad.
The idea that our memory is organized as a mapping native-language-word -> platonic-concept or word->image->concept is just an analogy, we don't have any evidence that our brain works like that.
A trap that many learners fall into is assuming that words and grammatical structures map 1-to-1, and so they try to form sentences by translating word by word. But that's orthogonal to memorizing via pictures. Translation is ok but it must be mostly in the target-language->native-language direction.
FWIW my native language is Portuguese but I've studied 2 languages (Japanese and Hebrew) using mainly English, which is my second language.
This technique might be helpful for the extremely basics, but what is something meaningful you would put on a card for something like hope or dignity that wouldn't be easily confused? I find pictures helpful but usually I use them to illustrate the example sentence and not the word itself.
I agree your original language is a crutch but what I've found has made get better faster is native language translations of the word. It takes a while to get comfortable doing that, but once you start doing it often enough it works very well.
I've been using a similar method to learn some German vocabulary for about 8 months now (using Flashcards Deluxe, not Anki, though), and I could specially relate to the "Two-way connections" section of your friend's article.
For example, my deck is currently German to English. As an experiment, once I reversed the deck for a while (making it English to German) and suddenly it became much harder. Maybe the solution is using two-way decks for vocabulary acquiring, so that you can not only read a word in German and understand it, but also want to - for example - search for something in German on Google and know it.
Or, maybe the way to go (for languages, at last) is just set the deck to Source Language* to Destination Language (in my case, English to German). Anyone has experience with that?
* Actually, English is not even my first language, but I'm comfortable with it enough to consider it a strong enough base to build on another language, mostly because there's more material in English than Portuguese about pretty much anything.
It's a great tool for memorizing things that need to be rote-memorized. Chinese characters often fall into that category. Arcane Chemistry vocabulary probably do as well.
It's just a flash card system on steroids. If you know how to use a flash card system appropriately then this is a pretty powerful substitute.
It definitely helps a lot for axioms, basic definitions, basic theorems, distribution functions and for things you "get wrong every time" etc., but everything beyond that it's inferior to exercises. As an example: I remember learning set theory and the subset relations of the number sets much faster than anyone else in my class.
Could you share more about how you've used it for less structured information? I've used Anki for about 3,000 Chinese words, and also some structured information (world capitals / countries). I've been experimenting with Anki for more conceptual knowledge and it's not nearly as easy.
I use Anki almost every day (for language learning) and from a user interface it is a terrible piece of software. It is inconsistent and not at all intuitive, even simple tasks usually require looking up documentation or tutorials.
That being said it is still the best software out there that I've found for this type of thing. I hope something better comes along at some point.
I use this daily for my foreign language studies. It has less features than Anki, but the interface is pretty clean, intuitive to use, and has a powerful plugin system. Plus, the whole thing is open source, written in Python, and highly extensible.
I've been using Anki to learn German, specifically getting a handle on the gender of nouns. Its been remarkably successful, since the data is essentially random, I can't imagine how I would remember it without using this tool.
I've also got a maths and a stats deck where I've been adding formulas (it supports Latex) as I progress in a couple of courses I've been taking. If you are studying at University, School, doing a MOOC or learning a language Anki is an incredible tool.
The main problem is that you really need to be using it most days. If you fall behind your backlog builds up and its use as a tool becomes much less useful. I commute on the tube most days so that hasn't been much of an issue for me, but when on holiday, traveling etc its easy to fall behind.
I've been using Anki to remember the books I read. I take notes as I'm reading and then transfer the important parts to Anki after I'm done. It's a pretty effective system.
I tried Quizlet for many months, but actually just recently switched to Anki. The Quizlet UI looks better on the surface, but Anki's UI is faster and more... utilitarian.
If you still want SRS it's pretty easy to export from Quizlet to Anki:
Find the export button on the upper right of Quizlet's website, and select tab delimited and new line termination. Copy paste this into a text editor. Now you can just click the import button in Anki and it's pretty straightforward!
One thing I've been doing in the past months, with great results, is memorizing passwords. I don't know how prevalent this is in the US, but here in Brazil, we use a lot of cards with chips, so that you type a password instead of signing a paper. To make it worse, there are sometimes different passwords for the same service in different situations (for example, most banks use a 4 or 6-digit password for debit purchases and a different 6 or 8-digit password for Internet Banking).
There are also credit card passwords, employee-issued benefit cards (I for example have a different card - and different passwords - for a meal card, a groceries card and a fuel card).
So, lately I've been randomly generating those and memorizing them with flashcards in a spaced repetition system. Has worked very well for me, with about 10 random 4-8 digit numeric passwords to remember.
AnkiDroid is an open source project developed by a third party, AnkiMobile is developed by the Anki developer, who is perpetually trying to find ways to fund the development of Anki.
Seems like a very good scheme IMO. With all the hype about Anki and how good it is lots of people will want to try it out. After finding out that it actually is good they might want to use it more frequent i.e. on the iPhone. And then they'll most likely buy it despite the price.
I know I will, anyway. And since Anki is open source and free I feel that the price will keep him motivated to improve on all things.
I use this every day, on my commute. Currently focusing on:
Physics
Python module stuff. It's not my main language, so I tend to forget exact names for functions in modules. I.e. what was that function that did that thing? Is it in os or os.path? If I look something up on stack overflow or in the Python module docs, I tend to create an Anki card for it.
I used to be a SuperMemo user for several years and accumulated more than six thousands items. It has advanced algorithms. Both Anki and Mnemosyne are based on the algorithm of SuperMemo 2(its version is 16 now). And there are several pieces of articles about human memory on its website which are very helpful.
But about a year ago, I gave up Supermemo. Because it's really buggy and bloated. I was so worried about my data that I used to back up my data into a zip file every day. Then I decided that I shouldn't trust a buggy closed source software like SuperMemo to protect my data. If it died, I would have trouble converting my data to other formats.
When I was considering the alternatives, I chose Mnemosyne instead of Anki. Because Mnemosyne seems cleaner, and its author is doing some research on human memory which made me think that its algorithm could be better than Anki.
I use it a lot for language learning and brushing up on those obscure nuggets of programming knowledge that tend to be asked at interviews.
The interface is quite clunky, but it's good enough, and with Latex and media support quite powerful. Probably not fluffy enough for the general public, though.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this summary apart from that you forgot to mention that the syncing across multiple devices works quite well too.
I went to Thailand a few years ago to do a research project for school. One of the requirements before leaving was taking a two month intro to Thai course. I used Anki to make flashcards, and they worked pretty well. Apparently I was the only person to realize that digital flashcards existed and when I sent them out to the rest of the class everyone loved me after that, haha. Didn't end out learning that much Thai but the cards served their purpose in helping me pass the class. I especially liked the feature that let you play a sound clip for both the question and answer. Given the tonal nature of Thai it was great to have sounds accompanying each card.
Can you please provide screenshots or a video above the fold? Even if the highlight of the product is not the GUI, I'm still okay seeing the product work even in a command line interface. It helps me process the context of what it is.
I made an app which uses the idea of spaced repetition to help you memorize flags. I was really amazed when I learned about this system a while back, and made this app to help my niece learn some interesting stuff. My app is really rudimentary and buggy, but I believe we are soon going to be seeing plenty of apps which incorporate these kind of ideas and really help us hack our learning process.
I've been using Anki for a hybrid approach to learn for some university courses, learning with the Android app during commute and physical paper cards at home.
shameless plug: I wrote a small tool to export Anki decks to PDF: https://github.com/nordicway/a2pdf
Only works for simple cards though.
[+] [-] kissgyorgy|12 years ago|reply
The whole point is the algorithm [1] which how Anki schedules your cards. It is based on Supermemo's [2], and improved a lot over the years, so I think it's the most optimal from all of the SRS software's out there.
Also I think Anki has a very simple UI, not sure how people can find it complicated. You just add cards, and by review you press a button, that's all. Cards are just HTML, but you can edit them with the built in WYSIWYG editor.
Anki is great for learning programming languages! See the Janki method [3] and another blog post [4] how to use it effectively. I found the last one especially helpful, and started learning Programming languages based on that. It works great. You can also learn linux commands, whatever.
People also asked for sharing cards. It is very important to make your own cards progressively and learn from those, because you know what you need to emphasize for the info to stick. Just use small information on every card, use your own terms, and it will be much easier to learn, compared to some random deck you downloaded.
[1]: http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#what-spaced-repetition-a...
[2]: http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/sm2.htm
[3]: http://sivers.org/srs
[4]: http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html
[+] [-] djulius|12 years ago|reply
An algorithm is optimal, not more, not most, just optimal.
For the case going here, you will have difficulty to prove any optimality, since the process involves humans. Efficient would be a better term than optimality.
[+] [-] hngiszmo|12 years ago|reply
Anki's spaced repetition algorithm is quite good and I definitely plan to boast on using a better one just like brainscape.com does but in the end, more important than which algorithm to use is to use spaced repetition at all. It just allows you to learn 20 times more with 20 minutes of time per day than I ever could back at school and far too few people know about that. If you never tried, please do it for a week or better longer as the effect kicks in only after at least some days of training the system.
In the end the actual spaced repetition algorithm used is not all that important, as long as easy stuff vanishes while hard stuff stays around.
[+] [-] tauon|12 years ago|reply
You should check out http://ankiapp.com
The SRS algorithm uses scoring prioritization instead of intervals and I've found it to be more optimal than Supermemo/Anki.
I was an Anki desktop user for over 8 years, but I always became overwhelmed by the number of reviews due that would accumulate if I didn't stay active with the app almost every day (review hell). I've found the priority SRS model much easier when studying in small chunks (5-10 minutes at a time, 2-3 times a day).
[+] [-] read|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oliao|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lispylol|12 years ago|reply
http://www.hackingchinese.com/if-you-think-spaced-repetition...
[+] [-] pohl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davycro|12 years ago|reply
One thing that puts Anki in an orbital beyond the other programs is the ImageOccusion editor add-on [1]. This lets you screenshot an image, draw rectangles over labels within that image, and then generate a flashcard for each label. This works insanely well for learning anatomy.
I remember about a month ago where I had two hours to learn the names of all the tracts and nuclei inside of the brainstem for a readiness quiz. It took about 10 minutes to create flashcards for them all, and an hour to memorize. I passed the quiz. Days later fellow classmates were still struggling to remember the same information.
1 - http://tmbb.bitbucket.org/image-occlusion-2.html
[+] [-] bedhead|12 years ago|reply
Remember to only use photos where you can, dont use english words in it. The whole key is to skipping the "translation" step in your brain. Learn by thinking of the action, not by thinking of the english word and its translation. Getting rid of that "lookup" step is the key to getting good at learning a new language.
[+] [-] nandemo|12 years ago|reply
As for using pictures only: there are studies that show that pictures and mnemonics improve recall, but AFAIK there are no studies that say that using your native (or another known) language is bad.
The idea that our memory is organized as a mapping native-language-word -> platonic-concept or word->image->concept is just an analogy, we don't have any evidence that our brain works like that.
A trap that many learners fall into is assuming that words and grammatical structures map 1-to-1, and so they try to form sentences by translating word by word. But that's orthogonal to memorizing via pictures. Translation is ok but it must be mostly in the target-language->native-language direction.
FWIW my native language is Portuguese but I've studied 2 languages (Japanese and Hebrew) using mainly English, which is my second language.
[+] [-] Larrikin|12 years ago|reply
I agree your original language is a crutch but what I've found has made get better faster is native language translations of the word. It takes a while to get comfortable doing that, but once you start doing it often enough it works very well.
[+] [-] lettergram|12 years ago|reply
http://rs.io/2014/04/05/anki-10000-cards-later.html
It's really useful for courses in college, especially Language, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics for definitions, pronunciations, systems, etc.
Math and Computer Science is a bit hard since a lot of that requires practice and it takes time to figure out how to structure those cards.
Anyways, highly recommend them.
[+] [-] ralmeida|12 years ago|reply
For example, my deck is currently German to English. As an experiment, once I reversed the deck for a while (making it English to German) and suddenly it became much harder. Maybe the solution is using two-way decks for vocabulary acquiring, so that you can not only read a word in German and understand it, but also want to - for example - search for something in German on Google and know it.
Or, maybe the way to go (for languages, at last) is just set the deck to Source Language* to Destination Language (in my case, English to German). Anyone has experience with that?
The linked article about "Why" questions was also a good find for me (http://rs.io/2014/02/25/why-questions-reveal-structure.html).
* Actually, English is not even my first language, but I'm comfortable with it enough to consider it a strong enough base to build on another language, mostly because there's more material in English than Portuguese about pretty much anything.
[+] [-] lispylol|12 years ago|reply
It's just a flash card system on steroids. If you know how to use a flash card system appropriately then this is a pretty powerful substitute.
[+] [-] 3rd3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sherwin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottharveyco|12 years ago|reply
That being said it is still the best software out there that I've found for this type of thing. I hope something better comes along at some point.
[+] [-] jliechti1|12 years ago|reply
http://mnemosyne-proj.org/
I use this daily for my foreign language studies. It has less features than Anki, but the interface is pretty clean, intuitive to use, and has a powerful plugin system. Plus, the whole thing is open source, written in Python, and highly extensible.
[+] [-] rrreese|12 years ago|reply
I've also got a maths and a stats deck where I've been adding formulas (it supports Latex) as I progress in a couple of courses I've been taking. If you are studying at University, School, doing a MOOC or learning a language Anki is an incredible tool.
The main problem is that you really need to be using it most days. If you fall behind your backlog builds up and its use as a tool becomes much less useful. I commute on the tube most days so that hasn't been much of an issue for me, but when on holiday, traveling etc its easy to fall behind.
[+] [-] danshipper|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philfreo|12 years ago|reply
Not strictly SRS but much better UI, mobile apps, audio, etc.
[+] [-] Osmium|12 years ago|reply
http://www.arizona-software.ch/provoc/
But luckily it's been forked and now lives on as iVocabulary:
http://apps.chbeer.de/ivocabulary/
I don't know if it's strictly an SRS app or not? It's certainly smart though, and is available on OS X and iOS and has a web interface too.
[+] [-] nightshowerer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barry-cotter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anateus|12 years ago|reply
Find the export button on the upper right of Quizlet's website, and select tab delimited and new line termination. Copy paste this into a text editor. Now you can just click the import button in Anki and it's pretty straightforward!
[+] [-] sibbl|12 years ago|reply
Personal ranking: Studyblue > Quizlet > Anki
[+] [-] p0ckets|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ralmeida|12 years ago|reply
There are also credit card passwords, employee-issued benefit cards (I for example have a different card - and different passwords - for a meal card, a groceries card and a fuel card).
So, lately I've been randomly generating those and memorizing them with flashcards in a spaced repetition system. Has worked very well for me, with about 10 random 4-8 digit numeric passwords to remember.
[+] [-] tomsthumb|12 years ago|reply
This could be a huge problem if your phone/laptop/whatever is stolen.
[+] [-] chrisBob|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gerbal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wingerlang|12 years ago|reply
I know I will, anyway. And since Anki is open source and free I feel that the price will keep him motivated to improve on all things.
[+] [-] solarmist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Walkman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stockninja|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|12 years ago|reply
Physics
Python module stuff. It's not my main language, so I tend to forget exact names for functions in modules. I.e. what was that function that did that thing? Is it in os or os.path? If I look something up on stack overflow or in the Python module docs, I tend to create an Anki card for it.
Same for Cocoa / Obj-C
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yfefyf|12 years ago|reply
But about a year ago, I gave up Supermemo. Because it's really buggy and bloated. I was so worried about my data that I used to back up my data into a zip file every day. Then I decided that I shouldn't trust a buggy closed source software like SuperMemo to protect my data. If it died, I would have trouble converting my data to other formats.
When I was considering the alternatives, I chose Mnemosyne instead of Anki. Because Mnemosyne seems cleaner, and its author is doing some research on human memory which made me think that its algorithm could be better than Anki.
[+] [-] gotofritz|12 years ago|reply
The interface is quite clunky, but it's good enough, and with Latex and media support quite powerful. Probably not fluffy enough for the general public, though.
[+] [-] 3rd3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gailees|12 years ago|reply
https://medium.com/medium-redef/5481606b087a
[+] [-] vdm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaredandrews|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orky56|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Walkman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thesoonerdev|12 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/Touched-By-Designs-Flags-30DMC/dp/B00I...
[+] [-] krrrh|12 years ago|reply
http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition
[+] [-] Walkman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nordicway|12 years ago|reply