Spaced Repetition Learning

Last week, we covered the topic of the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. Can you recall the equation? If you reviewed the article within 15 minutes of reading it you can! For those of you who can’t however, I will gladly provide you with it: “The equation used to govern the forgetting curve is R = e ^ (-t / S ), where R is retention, t is time, and S is the relative strength of memory.” “S” here is the relative strength of memory, which is affected by a number of factors. I mentioned last week that one of these methods, called “Spaced Repetition”, is one of those factors. Over the years, the practice of Spaced Repetition has become a science in itself. This method will allow you to take in and retain mass amounts of information very fast, maybe even Flash fast.

Lets begin by giving a brief overview of what Spaced Repetition is. In short, it’s a glorified flash card system that makes use of the stimulation of the brain over given intervals. What does this mean exactly? Say for example that you have a deck of Japanese Kanji that you would like to learn. Over the course of two weeks, you study the deck over and over. At the end those two weeks, you feel fairly confident that you know those Kanji fairly well. Now, you take that deck and lock it in a safe for an entire year. At the end of that year, you pull the cards out and try to recall them, finding it extraordinarily difficult to do so. Now it seems like the two weeks you studied seem like a complete waste of time. With the Spaced Repetition System (SRS), It would be possible to remember those Kanji in a year or two without reviewing them.

Here is how it works: (example taken from Wikipedia) Say you have a deck of cards you have made for Art History. One side has the painting, and the other has the Artist, Date, etc. Now go through that deck and sort out the ones you got right and wrong into two piles. The “right” pile goes to Group 3. Sort through the “wrong” pile, and divide them into “Completely Wrong” and “Got it right, but difficult” piles, which will be know as Group 1 and Group 2, accordingly. Now you review Group 1 cards every day, Group 2 cards every 2 days, and Group 3 cards every 3 days. Kinda get the picture? Good because now we will add more to the equation.

Say you now wanted to add more to the stack, well then go ahead and do that! However, be certain to keep track of what cards are in Groups 1,2,and 3. Now, it seems to be common sense that when you get upwards of 100 to 1,000 cards, studying them every 3 days seems to be a use of a great deal of your time. Lucky for us, scientist and psychologist have developed VERY complex algorithms (did I put enough emphasis on “Very?”) to learn how to adequately time each set of cards and when you need to review them. Of course, I do not expect you to be able to know how to preform these calculations, and neither did the makers of Anki. This nifty little program keeps up with all of that for you. The good thing about most of these programs are that they are offered for free. You will find that they all use slightly different algorithms, but the concept is the same.

It would also be great to mention at this point that this is not magic. As always, you get just as much out of it as you put in it. In other words, a little bit every day goes a very long way. The net result of this program is that over the given period of time, you would have learned a spectacular amount more with less effort than if you would have just sat down and tried to learn them without any gameplan, so to speak.

In conclusion, the SRS program stimulates your memory at specified intervals to keep you from forgetting material, being able to manage what you already know, and having the ability to easily add more if you wish to. Please check out the applications for the most efficient way to do so.

Here are the links mentioned in the article:
Anki - http://ichi2.net/anki/ (which I might add, has a WebApp for Iphone/Ipod Touch users)
SuperMemo - www.supermemo.com

And for you nerds out there who would like to see the math involved in this:
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/theory.htm

Next time, I’ll give a brief overview of the art known as “Speed Reading”. This happens to be a subject I know a lot about, so be prepared for an awesome article.

Be sure to refer all of your friends to these articles/fanpage. If enough people are interested, I’ll turn this into a full-blog and spread the joy over to Twitter. If you have any questions/concerns/suggestions, feel free to write on the fan-wall or post in the discussion area.

Hope you have a great week! Happy Studying!