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Comment by azemetre | Hacker News Reader

Flash cards are some of the least effective ways to learn FYI and retain info.

I'll bite. Would you care to back that up somehow? Or at least elaborate.

Spaced repetition as it's more commonly known has been quite studied, and is anecdotally very popular on HN and reddit. Albeit more for some subject than others

Give me another day and I'll respond in full; but my thesis is taken from the book "Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning" which was written by a group of neuro- and cognitive scientists on what are the most effective ways to learn.

The one chapter that stood out very clear, especially in a college setting, was how inefficient flash cards were compare to other methods like taking a practice exam instead.

There are a lot of executive summaries on the book and I've posted comments in support of their science backed methods as well.

It's also something I'm personally testing myself this year regarding programming since I've had great success doing their methods in other facets of my life.

> The one chapter that stood out very clear, especially in a college setting, was how inefficient flash cards were compare to other methods like taking a practice exam instead.

In order to take a practice exam, you need to understand the terms being used in the exam ahead of time. That's where flash cards come into play.

That said, to achieve mastery, I think you probably need both.

You might really like the book, because method they espouse for mastery is to have space varied practice where you reinforce retrieval of concepts during practice. Retrieval here meaning being able to correctly use information that you learned.

That's basically the core tenant of the book, it's basically trying to instill that the best pedagogy.

There was an interesting section IIRC about airline pilots and how they intersperse learning the various protocols compared to getting them in simulators ASAP.

I thought I still had the book but I think I read it from a library now as it's not in my library. I feel bad for wanting to post a youtube summary, but this reddit thread is more concise:

https://www.reddit.com/r/step1/comments/ebpl5a/few_principle...

edit: after reading everything I think I took flash cards under the wrong context and really wish I had the book now.

My family member is a third year med student (US) near the top of their class and makes heavy heavy use of Anki (which is crowdsourced in the Med School community to create very very comprehensive decks).

I've always viewed them as a good option if you just have a set of facts you need to lodge into your brain (especially with spaced repetition), not so good if you need to develop understanding.

I used flashcards with my daughter since she was 1.5 years old. she is 12 now and religiously uses flashcards for all learning. and I’d size her up against anyone using any other technique for learning whatsoever

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