Is there space for some sort of SRS that allows for input of the more helpful types of memorizations that you listed (pictures, venn diagrams, etc.)?
Unfortunately, Anki and other SRS software do not seem to support card dependencies (i.e. “only show card X if cards Y, Z… are firmly set in memory, as predicted by the spaced-repetition model”). If that was supported, using SRS to memorize heavily-structured data would simply be a matter of setting up appropriate dependencies. (A “memory palace” is really the same thing, except that the highest level of your hierarchy is a spatial model, i. e., your “palace” or “room”, containing the information you want to memorize.)
(One could generalize this by also supporting the option: “prioritize card X when cards Y, Z… are more easily recalled.” Then the deck could even include such things as mutual dependencies, loose associations etc. and the app could use them to “branch out” from what you know already, showing info that can most easily be committed to memory in a highly clustered way.)
Unfortunately, Anki and other SRS software do not seem to support card dependencies (i.e. “only show card X if cards Y, Z… are firmly set in memory, as predicted by the spaced-repetition model”). If that was supported, using SRS to memorize heavily-structured data would simply be a matter of setting up appropriate dependencies
The general idea of Anki is that you learn the knowledge first and then put it into Anki to avoid forgetting it.
The general idea of Anki is that you learn the knowledge first and then put it into Anki to avoid forgetting it.
Not necessarily. In some cases, the flashcard format is quite suited for learning new content as well—especially such things as vocabulary. Allowing inter-card dependencies could easily expand on these use cases.
It would also be directly useful in language learning: for instance, you could memorize some vocabulary words and then be prompted to learn related idioms, or collocations (i.e. words that are “often used together”). Despite its usefulness, this content is quite hard to memorize effectively in the absence of such specialized support.
This is not quite a “tech-tree” dependency structure, but you can use tags to stratify your cards and always review them in sequence from basic to dependent (i.e., first clear out the “basic” cards, then “intermediate”, then “expert”). Even if the grouping is arbitrary, I think you can go a long way with it. If your data is expected to be very large and/or have a predictable structure, you can always go for a “multiple-pyramid” structure, i.e, have “fruits basic” < “fruits advanced” < “fruits expert”, “veggies basics” < “veggies pro” tags &c, and perhaps even have an “edibles advanced” > veggies & fruits tag for very dependent cards.
On the assumption that the Anki algorithm works, just “reviewing down” to an empty deck every tag and proceeding thus sequentially from tag to tag, I think this would work too. Even if it so happened that by one Sunday you forgot “What is an American president” (basic) fact, it might still be profitable to rehearse that day the “Washington was the first president” card, despite the “20 rules” mentioned somewhere above. Presumably, if you had forgotten what a president is, the appropriate card is probably going to appear for review in the next few days, and so with a consistent (or even a semi-consistent) use of Anki, it would probably turn alright.
This is more for the anecdotal sake, but this reminds me a time when I burst out laughing out loud while at the dictionary. I was reading at the time “Three Men in a Boat”, and there was one sentence in which I didn’t know 2-3 of the words; the punchline clicked as I read the definition of the last of them.
Either way, somewhere higher on this commenting thread, I have also thought about the possibility (or rather, lack of) of creating dependencies in Anki. I’m actually thinking of creating an add-on/plugin to enable that—I’m learning Python these days (on which Anki runs), and I’m just about to start grad school (if I get admitted), so it seems like just the right time to make this (possibly major) meta-learning investment.*
* Not to mention that, since I’m learning Python, it’s also a (non-meta) learning investment. Win-win.
Unfortunately, Anki and other SRS software do not seem to support card dependencies (i.e. “only show card X if cards Y, Z… are firmly set in memory, as predicted by the spaced-repetition model”). If that was supported, using SRS to memorize heavily-structured data would simply be a matter of setting up appropriate dependencies. (A “memory palace” is really the same thing, except that the highest level of your hierarchy is a spatial model, i. e., your “palace” or “room”, containing the information you want to memorize.)
(One could generalize this by also supporting the option: “prioritize card X when cards Y, Z… are more easily recalled.” Then the deck could even include such things as mutual dependencies, loose associations etc. and the app could use them to “branch out” from what you know already, showing info that can most easily be committed to memory in a highly clustered way.)
The general idea of Anki is that you learn the knowledge first and then put it into Anki to avoid forgetting it.
Not necessarily. In some cases, the flashcard format is quite suited for learning new content as well—especially such things as vocabulary. Allowing inter-card dependencies could easily expand on these use cases.
It would also be directly useful in language learning: for instance, you could memorize some vocabulary words and then be prompted to learn related idioms, or collocations (i.e. words that are “often used together”). Despite its usefulness, this content is quite hard to memorize effectively in the absence of such specialized support.
This is not quite a “tech-tree” dependency structure, but you can use tags to stratify your cards and always review them in sequence from basic to dependent (i.e., first clear out the “basic” cards, then “intermediate”, then “expert”). Even if the grouping is arbitrary, I think you can go a long way with it. If your data is expected to be very large and/or have a predictable structure, you can always go for a “multiple-pyramid” structure, i.e, have “fruits basic” < “fruits advanced” < “fruits expert”, “veggies basics” < “veggies pro” tags &c, and perhaps even have an “edibles advanced” > veggies & fruits tag for very dependent cards.
On the assumption that the Anki algorithm works, just “reviewing down” to an empty deck every tag and proceeding thus sequentially from tag to tag, I think this would work too. Even if it so happened that by one Sunday you forgot “What is an American president” (basic) fact, it might still be profitable to rehearse that day the “Washington was the first president” card, despite the “20 rules” mentioned somewhere above. Presumably, if you had forgotten what a president is, the appropriate card is probably going to appear for review in the next few days, and so with a consistent (or even a semi-consistent) use of Anki, it would probably turn alright. This is more for the anecdotal sake, but this reminds me a time when I burst out laughing out loud while at the dictionary. I was reading at the time “Three Men in a Boat”, and there was one sentence in which I didn’t know 2-3 of the words; the punchline clicked as I read the definition of the last of them.
Either way, somewhere higher on this commenting thread, I have also thought about the possibility (or rather, lack of) of creating dependencies in Anki. I’m actually thinking of creating an add-on/plugin to enable that—I’m learning Python these days (on which Anki runs), and I’m just about to start grad school (if I get admitted), so it seems like just the right time to make this (possibly major) meta-learning investment.*
* Not to mention that, since I’m learning Python, it’s also a (non-meta) learning investment. Win-win.
It was to be expected-- Someone had already created a “hierarchy Tags” addon: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1089921461
I haven’t used it myself, but a comment there said “Simple, nice, and easy.”