I think everyone that talks about SRSing and the spacing effect and other aspects of memory should spend a day over at the Supermemo page, sometime. And read a well-rounded primer on current theories of memory. Things I find relevant to this topic are:

'planned redundancy' - http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/ks.htm#Univocality - scroll down a bit

'microspacing' and suchlike - http://www.supermemo.com/articles/myths.htm - 'The more you repeat the better' and 'Review your material on the first day several times'

memory interference - http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm (#11) and http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/ks.htm#Univocality

'involuntary habituation' - http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/background.htm (last section)

retrievability and stability - http://www.supermemo.com/articles/stability.htm

And just an example of some of the many interesting studies about models of memory:
http://books.google.com/books?id=5T7kNhh...#PPA111,M1

more on overlearning - http://www.supermemo.com/articles/overload.htm

Oh and something Tobberoth in particular might like: (On working memory and long-term knowledge) -
http://books.google.com/books?id=emdwD4Q...ch_s&cad=0

the idea of 'attentional focus' also I think is relevant to 'outside the SRS' discussions, as well as 'encoding variability theory'

I don't see any of this as gospel, I merely adjust my thinking according to solid reasoning and striking experiments, as well as my own intuition... I'm not arguing anything one way or another either, I'm just experimenting as I go along and still processing all this stuff. Makes my head hurt. ;p

I second what nest0r says some excellent articles there.

Thanks for the links guys.. I will check them thouroughly later ..
Just my two cents here. rtk1 and anki at same time? I tried for a few days..but
today I had a backlog of a week of cards in my failed rtk1 stack and spent like 2 hours on them... (around 154 cards) first looking at the list and writing down the kanjis and then click on all of them and check the ones I did right.. then clicking on "learned"
after that I had 214 cards to review.. Ok I had been "lazy" yesterday, usually I review everyday but I can positively say that I don't have time for anki now.
In total I probably spent 4 hours reviewing.
Until I finish the heisig rtk1 I will be doing this and only this, especially as I need to add cards as well from time to time.
I am now at 1440 kanjis, and hope to finish all of the rtk1 before summer, so I can go to Japan and start there to use anki and do my 10000 sentences or whatever and it seems that the most used kanjis are at the end of the book somehow, it means I really need to finish it before then, otherwise I will have 1500 kanjis but not the ones to understand the menu lol.
That's important!

Thanks Nest0r, I started reading and my whole evening disappeared! Fascinating information though, seriously, thank you very much.

I really really can't wait to just sit down and read them all.

I ended up spending more time today re-reading those pages too. ;/

Interesting links nest0r, thanks.

Interesting links indeed, but it seems to be that there's a lot of conjecture going on (or they are just REALLY lousy at referencing their sources). In that myth page, they pretty much just take a common idea and state an opposing fact without supplying any proof for that fact. As if just because they are professors, they don't have to have sources for their claims.

One thing in particular I noticed was their claims about the limits of human memory. Instead of providing tangible proof, like a real Academic report, they simply say "anyone who understands computing realizes there has to be a limit". What? We are talking memory, not computing. While it's a legit argument and comparison, you can't base a fact on comparing the human brain to a computer, we know WAY to little about it to do so.

Nukemarine Wrote:The time can vary, but keep the steps about the same above. Don't let the number of reviews dictate how long you study. Let how long you study dictate how many reviews you do.

Boo. I will keep up my 100 new card / 50 new item a day pace in Anki until I drop dead of exhaustion, damn it!

Tobberoth Wrote:One thing in particular I noticed was their claims about the limits of human memory. Instead of providing tangible proof, like a real Academic report, they simply say "anyone who understands computing realizes there has to be a limit". What? We are talking memory, not computing. While it's a legit argument and comparison, you can't base a fact on comparing the human brain to a computer, we know WAY to little about it to do so.

Tobberoth is right. We should not take anything for granted, especially be careful when we see those terms like professor or doctor.. unless you are going into surgery I would not trust that a doctor knows more than we do.
I welcome that they share their experience and knowledge but everybody should remember to think with his own mind and verify everything for themselves.
Still it is a very interesting read, and so even more combined with reading the forums reactions

Tobberoth Wrote:Interesting links indeed, but it seems to be that there's a lot of conjecture going on (or they are just REALLY lousy at referencing their sources). In that myth page, they pretty much just take a common idea and state an opposing fact without supplying any proof for that fact. As if just because they are professors, they don't have to have sources for their claims.

Yeah, pretty much. They're interesting, but there's a reason I didn't go to them for citations (well, actually, I did… wasted a good fifteen minutes on it).

Quote:One thing in particular I noticed was their claims about the limits of human memory. Instead of providing tangible proof, like a real Academic report, they simply say "anyone who understands computing realizes there has to be a limit". What? We are talking memory, not computing. While it's a legit argument and comparison, you can't base a fact on comparing the human brain to a computer, we know WAY to little about it to do so.

Eh; on the one hand, what they're ultimately saying is correct: informational capacity is a hard physical limit. On the other hand, that's information theory, not computing…

~J

Tobberoth Wrote:Interesting links indeed, but it seems to be that there's a lot of conjecture going on (or they are just REALLY lousy at referencing their sources). In that myth page, they pretty much just take a common idea and state an opposing fact without supplying any proof for that fact. As if just because they are professors, they don't have to have sources for their claims.

All reasonable, but that doesn't make those statements automatically wrong. At least they're conjectures from sources slightly more reliable than our "gut feelings". Still, nothing is proved or disproved.

Ha, that myth page especially has some funny stuff, if you scroll down. They start making these really serious lists about some rather trivial things.

I mostly focus on the Supermemo page as a source of long-standing reasoning behind the SRS software which modifies and refines my own thoughts and study methods, as well as a gateway to other memory research in a more focused way. The thing is, if you read the currrent books on memory (or just skim different bits), as well as various papers, even the most hardcore empirical research is subject to debate when it comes to forming actual models for memory, as well as pinpointing neural coordinates.

So I like to keep an open mind and just fixate on the basics that we can all largely agree on and go from there. Like the spacing effect... it's just nice, as nac_est says, to add to our 'gut feelings' and nebulous language with some concrete terminology and know that we're not just making up or Googling arbitrary stuff to support whatever methods we're using at a given moment. ^_^

Edit: I just thought of something funny.... the SRS is my 'heterophenomenological life partner'. Ha ha. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterophenomenology and http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ma...fePartners)

I don't know enough about SRS algorithms, but it seems like it eventually *should* model your brain pretty correctly.

In other words, it should over time learn your abilities. So if you choose Easy (Anki example) and it shows you the card in 7 days (gross simplification) and you keep forgetting it, then it should start reducing that interval until it learns what Easy means to you.

Someone who has more knowledge of the particular SRS algorithms - is this how they work? I really think every deck should adjust like this, as my memory works with different efficiency depending what I'm trying to remember.

My RTK1 deck is 72% for young cards and 86% for mature (at about 700 frames). My vocab deck is 91% and 94% respectively (but I don't test whether I can write the kanji).