A Better Way To Learn and Remember Things - Spaced Repetition

2,900 views Wait, is this logic right? • Apr 20, 2023

Slog Reference: Spaced repetition memory

Description

Spaced repetition in learning language and improving memory. In this FutureIQ episode, we dive deep into the concept of spaced repetition in learning theory and how it can be used to increase memory power and retain information for longer periods of time.

The hosts discuss the effectiveness of spaced repetition in various fields, including language learning, math, and other academic subjects. Listeners can expect to learn about the spaced repetition intervals algorithm and how it can be optimized for maximum effectiveness. The hosts also provide practical tips and tools for implementing spaced repetition in Excel and other software programs to make the process more efficient and manageable.

The episode includes evidence-based research on the benefits of spaced repetition and explores how it can be used to remember what you read for a long time. Listeners will walk away with a comprehensive understanding of how spaced repetition works and how to incorporate it into their learning routine to achieve better results.

Overall, this FutureIQ episode provides a valuable resource for anyone looking to improve their memory power and retain information more effectively through spaced repetition.

References from the episode:
Chunking episode: https://youtu.be/hEycxtv5FCo
Michael Neilson's Blog: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
Why Doing Nothing Makes You More Creative - The Hidden Power of Boredom

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

00:00 Introduction
01:25 Ebbinghaus's Experiment
03:25 Schedule for revising
04:13 What is wrong with school schedules for learning?
05:23 Apps that use startegic learning
09:14 Can I use space repetition for getting rid off certain habits?
10:27 Why should I try rote learning?
12:46 Quick tip

#futureIQ #memoryskills

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Transcript

- Naveen yeah you keep saying that schools are not employing root learning correctly you said that on multiple occasions in multiple places and in fact in a lot of our episodes but in in the episode that we did on chunking you said that root learning is actually useful right yes Road learning is necessary to learn okay you Hitler wrote learning I hate Road learning yeah but you know are we the understand to hate our lives because we have to do something uh like that the answer is no well in the grand philosophical scheme of things we are destined to hate our lives but sorry no digressions go on the reason we hate Road learning is because we do it badly

0m 43s okay we haven't learned how to memorize things the correct way right okay today I want to talk about space repetition memory a technique by which rote learning becomes much easier and in some cases enjoyable and you reduce the amount of time significantly needed to memorize anything I already reduced the significant amount of time by using chunking and now you are telling me I can reduce it further yes so um you haven't seen trunking go check out chunking it's a brilliant brilliant episode that Naveen and I did a while ago but uh it it has some fascinating techniques that you can use go check it out so uh let me tell you the story of this guy called ebbing house okay ebbing

1m 28s house so he uh was trying to learn uh some languages what a big house did was that he would take groups of words to be memorized and he did different kinds of experiments on each one of them right some of the words he would look at once and not revise for a long time some of them he would revise immediately in 10 minutes some of them he would revise in an hour some he would revise in a day and he found some very interesting patterns right like what two patterns I want to point out okay first is that the chances of you forgetting something huh fall very sharply right within 10 minutes you'll remember most of the

2m 16s things an hour later you'll have forgotten like half of them yeah a day later you'll have forgotten 90 percent it's a curve which is basically an exponential uh Decay and it's called a big house for getting the second more interesting part of it is that if you memorize something and you revise it 10 minutes later okay then after that if you look at the forgetting curve it is not as steep as the first forgetting curve it's a flatter curve so now you are not going to forget 90 of them in a day it's going to take you three days to forget 90 okay so that's what my teachers were saying revise no but the thing is that now if you revise

3m 00s it again the third time a day later huh right now the forgetting curve is even more flat now you are going to forget 90 percent okay you're going to remember most of them for about a week okay and if you revise again within a week you're going to now remember them for a month so you have to revise just around the time you are likely to forget with each uh flattened curve so yeah so the two important things are one is that revise just when you are going to forget huh and that period becomes longer and longer exponentially right so the correct schedule for revising is first time revise within 10 minutes then revise an hour later then

3m 45s one day later then three days then seven days then one month then three months and so on and these numbers like concrete numbers or these are actual concrete uh numbers repeat them again 10 minutes then an hour then a day then uh three days then seven days then one month right oh I don't have to memorize all of this you get apps which will do this for you okay because I was wearing I was trying to chunk all of this into my head yeah so I tell you what is wrong with uh school studying right they didn't have a schedule like this they were like oh revise every day or something like that right they would

4m 22s just have a fixed schedule for revision and you revised everything correct they are not supposed to revise everything you are only supposed to revise the things you were just going to forget today right it didn't help that I was usually on the verge of forgetting everything every day that's because that's because you're maxing out your brain with revising things that you are not going to forget see teacher I told you I was maxing out my brain you thought I was quitting and I was making excuses so the important thing is that Suppose there is a word you have memorized three times right now you are going to remember it for a week revising it tomorrow is of no use it

5m 02s does not increase your memory of that word right revising it every day for the next uh six days is still going to make you remember it only for seven additional days right whereas for six days you don't look at it seventh day just before forgetting you revise it and now you'll remember it for a month ah right uh a lot of the apps that are available for especially for learning languages because this is the context that ebbing has also developed it again do they use this spaced memory repetition I don't it depends on the app so for example Duolingo and memorize are two apps which use this very well uh they are aware of this and that's why they have become so

5m 46s popular and so good at helping you learn whereas if you are trying to do it by yourself without knowing this you are going to end up doing it very inefficiently and you will probably end up spending like 5x or 10x the amount of time on your memorization efforts okay whereas by using this strategic revisions with the help of an app you can significantly reduce by you know almost a factor of 10 or more we are not being paid by either of the two apps they are premium Services dual important memories see but if they want to pay us we'll gladly take the money just just putting it out there no important thing I want to point out is that this is not just

6m 28s about learning languages right it can be used to learn anything it can be used for maths it can be used for physics it can be used for understanding politics anything right so there is there are generic apps you can get okay one is called super memo one that I use is called Anki and what it does is that it allows you to create a card with the front side at the back side you look like a flash card a flash card except that the app keeps track of the schedule of which one you are likely to forget on which day and so to show it to you at that time right oh so it keeps

7m 08s track so at any given time it will know that these cards are to be shown to you today these are to be shown to you tomorrow these to be shown a week later these to be shown a month later and so on right so uh for example right now in my Anki I have about 3000 cards okay yeah you made those cards yeah over a period of like seven eight years sorry but uh can you guess on any given day how many of those three thousand do I have to revise 30 70 100 around 20 that's it okay that was doable because this Anki is doing such a good job of scheduling them that most of the cards are now at a stage

7m 53s where I have to revise them just once a year right or once in eight months that's also because you have put in that much effort into those cards into remembering and whatever no no no as in well as in the effort the point is that Anki does I mean this whole concept of space repetition does such a good job of scheduling things that most things very quickly the I mean the way exponential uh Decay works is that very quickly most things uh require a revision just once in a very long time right so the amount of time I spend on this on any given day is not more than six seven minutes and yet I am able to memorize so many things

8m 37s that are important for my work and for other things so is this like a way of making sure that certain things percolate down from short-term memory to long-term members absolutely right we did an episode on chunking uh where we talked about uh you know how our working memory is very limited correct but our long-term memory is unlimited Anki the space repetition is an extremely efficient way of moving things from short-term memory to long-term memory and also an extremely efficient way of creating chunks that we can use for higher level learning you know the immediate thing that comes to mind is uh using something like this for Behavioral change like there are some bad habits I

9m 24s want to get rid of or there are some behaviors that I want to change uh I think space repetition can help me change certain behaviors no the problem with space repetition is that it's only useful for memory right it's only there for changing the connections in your brain as far as the long term memory is concerned right okay unfortunately it doesn't help you with behavior right for that you will need other techniques which uh we will talk about in a different episode called Atomic habits Atomic habits I love that book yes it's a beautiful book and if you haven't read it do read it because uh we will talk about it but that doesn't mean that if

10m 06s you read the book you won't know or you will already know what we are going to talk about because trust me he will come up with things that you won't even think about uh but uh okay so one way to practice space repetition is to use apps like Anki or in case of language specifically Duolingo or memorize yeah and stuff like that I'm not in school or college anymore I don't need to memorize subjects and textbooks and theories and whatever uh why will this help me at all actually you need to be learning things all the time right uh say you use Excel I have him but go on do you use Excel yes I do if you memorize the key

10m 49s bindings of excel your use of excel will go up significantly if you memorize some of the functions uh what you can achieve with Excel can go up significantly and the only reason you are not doing that is because you are afraid of memorization right and space repetition can help you with that that is true but the other reason why I'm not doing it is because the source typically gives me whatever I want to know so it doesn't work like that right one is that even search is going to take you 30 seconds whereas if you already know it it takes you sub second you can do things much faster it's not just a question of time

11m 28s it is a question of using up your working memory right there are some things you just can't do if each step is going to take 30 seconds he does have a good point yeah he does have a good point and by the way in this example you can replace search with stack Overflow and you can replace functions with whatever apis and whatnot but it's not just about that either right I mean if for my work uh it turns out that I need to now learn about machine learning uh right I have to slowly build up the concepts of machine learning right each new paper that is I'm trying to read uh using space repetition to understand the

12m 13s papers uh really helps we will have a link to Michael Nielsen's article on all the different ways in which he uses space repetition read that a lot of examples of Fairly Advanced things you can do to help uh learn things using space repetition Read that read that in 10 minutes read that in one hour read that in one day then read that in three then seven then a month memorize put it into your long term memory right um anything else that we need to remember in terms of space repetition and changing because now you've proven that rote learning if done correctly is done in this manner is incredibly helpful so I am 100 sure that there are

13m 00s kids out there who definitely hate you and there are teachers out there who love you I would put it the reverse right most of the time I think the uh uh kids if they really use this correctly they're going to love me because they will end up spending much less time on road learning on revisions and Route learning the other thing I want to point out is that if you are trying to learn something very standard things in school you can get ready-made decks of cards that you just download into your Anki app and then you can immediately start memorizing them so when I was trying to learn Sanskrit and Persian I just downloaded ready-made lists of words and

13m 44s phrases right but when you are trying to do something more complex like when I was trying to learn how Quantum Computing works at that time I ended up having to make my own cards and also in general to do a really good job it is always best if you create your own cards it's a little more effort up front but it helps you learn much better and the concepts become much stronger think of it as making your own notes absolutely yes yeah fascinating spaced repetition memory thank you this is future IQ