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Incremental Learning

super-memory.com

83 pointsTomte20 comments

What actually is incremental learning?

The 'What is Incremental Learning?' section seems deliberately poorly written.

    Incremental learning is the fastest and the most comprehensive way of learning available to students at the moment of writing (2013).

    Incremental learning is a consolidation of computer-based techniques that accelerate and optimize the process of learning from all conceivable material available in electronic form, and not only.

    Currently, SuperMemo is the only software that implements incremental learning. In SuperMemo, the student feeds the program with all forms of learning material and/or data (texts, pictures, videos, sounds, etc.). Those learning materials are then gradually converted into durable knowledge that can last a lifetime.

I’m not sure, but learning is certainly more than remembering things. Years ago I spent a lot of time typing CS things into Anki and practicing their recall. Eventually I realised that I didn’t really have a good understanding of half the things I was memorising.

Retrieval practice is one of the most effective ways to learn and retain new information. Research shows that it's more effective than summarization, elaborate interrogation, self-explanation, highlighting, imagery use for text learning, rereading and interleaved practice [0].

Not only that, retrieval practice has shown not only to boost retention but meaningful learning [1] as well. For example, in one study, students who studied a given text solely by practicing retrieval performed significantly better on creating concept maps than students who studied by creating concept maps.

Retrieval practice is not the only superweapon Anki entertains in its arsenal, it also employs distributed practice, which is another very powerful tool and finding in cognitive research with plenty of evidence supporting it.

[0]: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1177/1529100612453266

[1]: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1126/science.1199327

Yes, you’re not supposed to blindly memorize things. The method is to learn and understand the material first and then practice recall to retain that understanding.

It's a system for automating learning.

You have thirty books. Instead of taking a month for each book, getting value sequentially, you read all thirty books at the same time, with the software splitting it up for you into tiny pieces, so you can soak them all in and get lots of knowledge simultaneously, rather than the sort of limited, controlled drip of knowledge from an individual work.

It's surprisingly useful for things like language learning, where you don't really start with much understanding but books intend for your ability to change while reading; that said, the author uses it for everything he consumes, even email.

It's pretty interesting, if you're of the belief that knowledge compounds, or if you just don't really have the patience or attention span for individual works. Certainly isn't for everyone, and if you aren't willing to make your own tooling, the existing tooling is pretty bad.

This made me wonder, which languages would be best learned together. Probably a pairing like Italian, French, Spanish would work well, as they're all Latin languages.

Or perhaps it would be better to pair some languages which have defining differences.

I think similar languages such as the ones you mention would be great; as a native spanish speaker I continue to find joyful coincidences and contrasts that help even better understanding my native tongue. For example, neither guardare (italian), nor regarder (french), have a direct reflection in spanish (guardar in spanish is to keep, or to look after, but not literally to look, which is mirar instead), but it is what a guardia does.

I've found learning very similar languages simultaneously is tricky because cognates conflict with each other. Is it lemon or límon? It might be better to get good enough at one that you can intuitively distinguish it from the other, without pausing to reflect.

Anki (http://ankisrs.net/ and https://ankiweb.net/about) is what I'm familiar with. All versions are freely available except the iOS version ($25). I use it to memorize all sorts of things, including phone numbers (something I used to do as a kid before mobile phones), birthdays, vocabulary (English and other languages), and poetry.

Reading a book and then taking a walk is a form of incremental learning. Reading a page and pausing to question yourself about what you just read is incremental learning (see Make It Stick: the science of successful learning, by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel, 2014).

SuperMemo is one way to go about it, but it seems like icing on a readily-available cake.

I keep a few math books and a variety of dual-language paperbacks in the bathroom. It's become a really important part of my intellectual diet.

I never heard people advocating for this approach (people like Michael Nielsen and alike). Anyone is in reseach and had a positive experience with it?

It makes sense that context-independent SRS are not suited for incremental reading, so I wonder what's stopping from this approach filling the gap. Is it solely pricing issue?

Books I have read [1,2,3] have all discussed the "incremental learning" approach without calling it that. They frame it in the context of daily repetitions of the material in order to gradually solidify it in your mind and commit it to longer-term memory. However, their approach goes well beyond that and explores many additional factors that play into the learning process as well.

The fact remains, in order to learn ANYTHING, there are no "tricks" for most of us. It takes effort, engagement, focus, self-discipline, commitment, and consistent application of the material, call it repetition whatever.

I have not found any short-cuts and while there may be techniques that might help with memorization (mnemonics and phonetics etc) your brain is dependent upon the amount of rest you get, the quality of your diet, the degree to which your brain is not under external stress while it is engaged in learning and a desire and willingness to be engaged with your topic, IMO.

[1] The Science of Self-learning, Hollins, Peter ISBN: 978-1731416735 (Although Hollins goes into more detail around how to read, self-discipline etc.)

[2] The Self-Learning Blueprint, Hollins, Peter ISBN: 978-1077241275 (This book, from the same author in [1] is completely different in that he addresses the 4 pillars of learning: Transform and Synthesize Knowledge, Combine the New with the Familiar, Self-testing and Retrieval, and Absorption)

[3] Teach Yourself How to Learn, MacGuire et al, ISBN: 978-1620367568 (This book treats metacognition, positive emotions and motivation as the cornerstones of Learning)

For those confused on the specifics of incremental reading, I recommend this video by a friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNCLLNZEtz0

For those interested in learning to use SuperMemo, I recommend joining the supermemo discord server: supermemo.wiki/discord

Add some horizontal padding to the page: 1. Right-click, 'inspect'

2. Click on the 'console' tab in the newly opened inspection pane

3. Paste the following into the input field:

document.getElementById('bodyContent').style = 'margin: 0 15%;'

4. Click 'Enter' or 'Return'

PS: This isn't permanent. Doing a page refresh gets rid of it.

The wiki version may have more readable formatting: https://help.supermemo.org/index.php?title=Incremental_learn...

I use the supermemo software. It works great for learning but the software itself is a bloated mess

Useful website, in principle. HORRIBLE READING EXPERIENCE. My eyes gave up after a couple seconds.

They're still incrementally developing the website.

Seems to not be all that related to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_learning

also known as "Online learning"

Any model that can be continuously trained (this includes neural networks) is an "incremental learner".

Or as I like to call it "learning".

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