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Comment by judofyr | Hacker News Reader

Some context: The author created https://quantum.country which is a text book augmented with spaced-repetition. It seems that Orbit is a toolkit for creating these types of flashcard/spaced-repetition learning webpages for anyone (with the user data being stored at Orbit's server).

I'll have to say that I'm still not 100% sure how useful this approach is. Most of the times when you're learning something you're not merely reading, but you're also actively using the knowledge in some way. If I'm learning about B-trees then the major part of that learning process is implementing them. If I'm learning some complicated math I will solve a bunch of exercises. Where does flashcards in a text book fit into this?

It was also my impression (from the Anki community) that spaced-repetition is far more effective when you create the cards yourself. A common "beginner mistake" is to download a pre-made deck and start memorizing from scratch.

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I think the "beginner mistake" is that you can download a pre-made deck of 1000 German words, many of which you have never heard before, so it will be very hard to make them stick in your memory.

With Orbit, I think the idea is that the prompts are very well crafted (Andy has some research on making good prompts) and also that you are encountering the questions right in the context where you are learning about them, so you have something to attach them to.

I think this is a complementary thing for implementing B-trees or solving exercises. That is needed as well, but will you still remember the finer details of splitting nodes in a B-Tree a month later? Or six months later? Which might or might not be necessary.

Fully agreed! I think the existing options for pre-made decks often resemble your "1000 German words" example, and the space of providing good pre-made decks is explored far too little and dismissed too quickly in the Anki community.

I can see something like Orbit very likely existing in the set of my future learning tools. Most texts that I read (doesn't matter with how much concentration), flow right through me and nothing sticks. The only way to make them stick is by exercising with spaced repetition flashcards, but creating them often takes so much time that I only bother to do it for the most important subjects.

A possible future evolution of the concept where cards unlocked on two independent websites can unlock further cards like "how does concept A (from website A) relate to concept B (from website B)" would be amazing, and seems very much in the realm of possiblity.

> I think this is a complementary thing for implementing B-trees or solving exercises. That is needed as well, but will you still remember the finer details of splitting nodes in a B-Tree a month later? Or six months later? Which might or might not be necessary.

This is a very good point. This is the type of knowledge which I don't care about retaining. I'm pretty confident that I can re-learn it in a few days when I need it later. It's also not critical to have this knowledge at the top of my head as I'm rarely going to be in a situation where I need to recall this immediately.

This is quite different from vocabulary where it is critical that you can find (or understand) the word in seconds otherwise you'll fail at communicating.

You make a great point that using knowledge is important in actually learning the study material. Personally, those moments of learning happen when I stumble across a problem where I'm applying my knowledge in the wild.

What I've found is that spaced-repetition software lets me keep in touch with information long enough to be able to have those moments more consistently, otherwise I read something interesting, take notes, and two weeks later its pretty much out of memory. By extending the amount of time info is living in my head, I get more chances to use the knowledge and take it to heart!

This doesn't lend itself to everything perfectly well though, I've had luck learning how to do household tasks like gardening, cooking where I'm semi-regularly getting chances to use what I'm learning

I made a SRS deck for PHP stuff when I was going to take the certification.

What I found was that studying the deck didn't help me at all. What did help was making the deck.

IMO, if something makes the deck for you, it's going to drastically reduce the usefulness of the deck. Making the deck means a lot, and possibly much more than studying the deck could do for you.

It does help that this is making it from something you're trying to read... But I think removing that effort is actually harmful to the experience.

As I understand it, the Orbit platform presents the cards to you within the context of the text you are studying, where you'd probably want to create a card yourself if you were making them.

For example you just read a section of a text and decide you should make a card for it. In Orbit the text would provide the card pre-made.

I could also imagine extending this to make it possible for the reader to create personalize review prompts, on the fly, and build up a personal card deck for the text.

That was my assumption, too. But it's taken the work out of it. You no longer need to think about the card you're making. You probably just click a few times and poof, there's a card.

There's no memorizing it long enough to put it somewhere else. There's no typing (or hand-writing). You don't have to re-read it more than about once, unlike hand-making SRS cards where you'd read it at least a few times.

Given that Andy says Orbit is currently a research project, perhaps the efficacy of SRS with pre-made cards v personally-written cards is something that could be studied more closely.

> It was also my impression (from the Anki community) that spaced-repetition is far more effective when you create the cards yourself. A common "beginner mistake" is to download a pre-made deck and start memorizing from scratch.

Varies between people and subject matter I think.

All of my Anki usage thus far has been for language learning, and for this use case pre-made decks have been better than self-made for the simple reason that these decks are higher quality than I have patience to build myself. I do still plan to build my own decks for vocab beyond core 2-3k but for getting off to a running start I think premade is just fine.

Same here, I learned Chinese largely by studying a pre made deck of sentences with audio over the course of a few years. I had lots of conversation practice too but the SRS studying bootstrapped my knowledge to the point where I could even attempt conversations. I used to believe that using a pre made deck is a waste of time just because I heard a few people say so, now I know it’s not always true.

Research shows that doing the recall is the important part. The effect is by now well accepted. Off course if you do the cards yourself you can guarantee both their quality and their relevance to you. Ive heard of research pointing that learning things that are relevant to you helps. (If you are learning Spanish to speak with a relative or friend a flash card with an obscure literary word is probably more annoying than helpful). early episodes of Learning Scientists podcast talk about using vs creating flash cards if you want to know more.

"Where does flashcards in a text book fit into this?"

Answering a question doesn't have to rely only on rote memorization. For example, a book might explain how to do addition, and then ask "What is 110+257?". You might need to use a piece of paper to work out the answer. And, if that same question is asked again a couple of weeks later, it's unlikely you'll remember the answer. You'll need to work it out again, reinforcing your understanding of the technique.

"spaced-repetition is far more effective when you create the cards yourself"

Yes, but part of the reason is that there's little point in having a card for something you've not encountered in another context. But Quantum Country doesn't present questions to you until after you've encountered the concept in the text.

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