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Comment by rickcarlino | Hacker News Reader

I've used spaced repetition to memorize nearly 5,000 words over the last 15 years, but I struggle to apply spaced repetition outside of key/value pair memorization.

It seems that SRS is best used for "know what" rather than "know how".

I am curious if anyone has applied spaced repetition to memorization of things other than terminology and how they did it.

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I was in this boat until I read Andy’s article on how to write good prompts, which I’d highly recommend: https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/

I built an Anki deck[0] to prepare for and pass on my first attempt the Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI) initial oral exam, considered by some to be the toughest checkride — although pass rates have been rising in recent years[1].

[0]: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1069780390

[1]: https://jasonblair.net/?p=3326

The problem with SRS in my opinion is the inability to do many-to-one mappings. That is, a single question that builds upon your knowledge of already-learned simpler concepts by combining them together into a compound problem.

In the context of language learning this could be a sentence which tests multiple individual vocabulary items and grammatical patterns together. In the context of maths it could be using multiple techniques in sequence to solve a more complex equation.

I think this would bridge the gap between the atomic knowledge that flashcards give you and the more generalized knowledge that applied practice gives you.

AFAIK, no existing SRS is capable of this. I started working on a prototype web app that could do it but I haven't finished it yet. I plan to return to it at some point.

From a language learning perspective, I think this is accomplished via memorization of complete sentences. I am building an SRS as a side project where you memorize complete sentences instead of single vocabulary words and your response is graded by an LLM so that you don’t lose points when your answer is not quite correct or differs slightly in prompt meaning. is that what you meant? I have had good luck using this technique for memorization of grammar rather than memorization of vocabulary.

Dude, nice job! I've been using SuperMemo daily since January 2006! I started using it only for Japanese vocabulary words, but after a few years I tried to branch out and start using it for other stuff. It took a while to really wrap my head around using SRS to learn bigger concepts outside of learning languages. To make a long story short, it all comes down to breaking down any concept or idea into single sentence bites that are added to your flashcard collection. Very often complicated concepts require many flashcards, and (to me) THIS is where learning truly happens. Looking at an idea and saying "what makes this idea work?" and making sure those ideas are covered adequately in your flashcard collection. Now as I listen or read something, I'm constantly asking myself "Is this idea covered in my SuperMemo collection?" And if not, I write down single sentences in my Notes app and add them the next morning after I finish my repetitions. (When do you do your reps? First thing in the morning or throughout the day?) I was annoyed when I was going down this path because there were little to no resources for using SRS to learn complex information (Outside of the SuperMemo web site), so a lot of this I had to learn by trial and error. Let me know if you want to chat, so cool to find others that are dedicated enough to go 10+ years with SRS!

Nope, you're entirely correct.

It's for vocabulary and terminology mainly, or other simple facts like historical dates, country capitals, etc.

It's irrelevant to conceptual learning, where it may be very difficult to understand something, but once you do you understand it for life.

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