I really don't think this will be a spoiler for anybody (at least in the first post). But if you haven't seen the movie be aware you may come away with more knowledge than you wanted.

Recently I've been thinking about how I learned math and experimenting with applying various SRS and memory curve techniques to the process in a classroom oriented way. The problems being of course that while part of math is memorization, the other part is experience.

Tonikaku, this morning I was sitting through an observation lesson culminating the 4 week student-teacher session of a future Japanese English teacher. While I was looking at the bored slumps of the 40 Japanese kids in front of me, I tried to imagine a future where education was clearly divided into information, philosophy, experience, and abilities. Any and all information that had to be memorized would be taught in a way that best utilizes our brains way of embedding that information, and classes could be easily molded around this concept to take advantage of it once it's fully memorized or to be a part of the process itself.

Lets have an example from Mathematics:
To learn algebra requires the memorization of various formulae for breaking apart and putting together numbers. This is of course after the basics are taught via an exploration method. After these facts are memorized they have to be practiced on a variety of word problems to show, via experience, how they can be applied to real life situations and to come to a full understanding of the math that was just memorized. So an ideal textbook would present an idea, then again three days later perhaps present it again, then again 7 days later perhaps present it again. In this way everything could be woven together and brought back into focus at the ideal time to help along memorization of the facts, which could be presented via problems requiring you to experience them to solve, then killing two birds with one stone.

It was while I was visualizing this I saw the scene from the newest Star Trek on the Vulcan homeworld when the camera was panning through all the learning-pits and everybody was spitting out facts. Maybe in the future the Vulcan's have figured all this out and that's why they're so dang smart!!

Woah... that sounds really different. Too different, perhaps, for the specific ways schools are run today. I'd love to see that approach to learning attempted and documented though!

Interesting. So what you want to do is put children in learning pods?

kazelee Wrote:Interesting. So what you want to do is put children in learning pods?

Actually I just want them to get really really mad when somebody talks smack about their mother. I just assumed the super sized SRS learning pods were part of that process...

kazelee Wrote:Interesting. So what you want to do is put children in learning pods?

Don't we already do that? It's called History class.

I do like the idea of SRS being incorporated into individual learning plans or self paced classes.

Sort of on topic, but here's how I describe SRS to people:

Imagine you're in College and you walk into a new class. The professor says: "Good morning, this class you will be roughly seven days a week. Tests can be anywhere from 100 to 200 questions or more. If you miss a day, those questions will be added to the following day's test. The questions will cover any and all material previously studied". Now, hearing this, will you drop out of that class?

Never talked about the subject, but the answer has always been "Yes, I'd walk out". After that answer, I go into what the SRS is doing. Now after that, they think it's a great idea.

Isn't weird that people have this fear of being tested in college? Yet the idea of reviewing/testing one's knowledge is not a bad thing.

Nii87 Wrote:Woah... that sounds really different. Too different, perhaps, for the specific ways schools are run today. I'd love to see that approach to learning attempted and documented though!

Schools aren't really run in a specific way. They are in a constant state of chaos now a days.

The current prevalent model is a throwback to the industrial revolution. The old-room-school house model with mixed grades all taught by one teacher didn't work in urbanizing cities and so new systems based on needing assembly line workers were pioneered (not just in the US). Then we had these separate grades, large classes, efficiency in teaching and respect to authority. The perfect way to create a working class capable of working in industry.

Class sizes have been shrinking for a couple decades now and a lot of other changes are happening through necessity. For example, a lot of math that used to be memorized isn't even taught now, because of calculators. Instead some texts gear towards applied math in an attempt to teach kids the theory without doing long calculations.

Through conversations I've had about education, I think a couple if key ideas keep coming up over and over again.
~Information is now widely accessible in ways it never was, and the skill set necessary to deal with that is: how to access it, how to make use of it, and how to discern good information from bad. Instead of imparting the information, we should be showing what to do with it (since one can get it whenever they want).
~The ideal class size is evidenced in nature. The largest number of offspring a mammalian mother can typically raise well (between 1-6).
~Student centered learning is way underused, as is students teaching their juniors material (an important learning aid that went extinct with the one-room schoolhouse).

Most of these are well documented, well attempted education techniques. The rest is just politics and money.

Edit: look at charter schools for an example of all these ideas in practice. A lot of charter schools consist of a communities students (5-10) and focus their learning on what the students want to explore, guided by education coaches and with visiting teachers and professors to cover the specific courses. It's mostly student centered group learning (i.e. homeschooling with other people).

Nukemarine Wrote:Sort of on topic, but here's how I describe SRS to people:

Imagine you're in College and you walk into a new class. The professor says: "Good morning, this class you will be roughly seven days a week. Tests can be anywhere from 100 to 200 questions or more. If you miss a day, those questions will be added to the following day's test. The questions will cover any and all material previously studied". Now, hearing this, will you drop out of that class?

Never talked about the subject, but the answer has always been "Yes, I'd walk out". After that answer, I go into what the SRS is doing. Now after that, they think it's a great idea.

Isn't weird that people have this fear of being tested in college? Yet the idea of reviewing/testing one's knowledge is not a bad thing.

College tests have pressure behind them, where SRS tests do not. If I'm failing (below 60% success) in my SRS, I change my study habits or even cut back on how much new information I'm pulling in. If I'm failing my class at school, I'm screwed.

I've thought about using an SRS for studying in college and the thought scares the ---- out of me. as long as it's going well, it'd be great. When it starts going downhill, the only brakes are to quit and go back to rote memorization... And it's already too late for that by the time you realize it.

wccrawford Wrote:College tests have pressure behind them, where SRS tests do not.

Exactly! This is TOTALLY off-topic, but I have to () say this: Never be under pressure in college tests, trust me it works, just like how it works for SRS

undead_saif Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:College tests have pressure behind them, where SRS tests do not.

Exactly! This is TOTALLY off-topic, but I have to () say this: Never be under pressure in college tests, trust me it works, just like how it works for SRS

Easier said than done, specially for those on scholarships that depend on their grades.

More on topic-ish: SRS based schooling would be awesome, though there's no reason one can't do this by oneself (as in, mining your text-books for the facts, srs-ing and going to class merely for the non-memory-based stuff (practice and the such)). I did this last term, and got 95%+ marks on most my college courses (except for one, but that was because it involved a lot of drawing, and i suck at drawing).

It does work quite well, if you use anki subscription function you can work together with your friends and make a deck the entire class can use =D.

I don't see how SRS stuff will help university that much. For instance one of the units I had most trouble with was the vibrations and signal processing (Engineering in general was difficult). This was very maths heavy, but maths that required application of knowledge. You can use SRS to memorise formulae and stuff, but that is easy to memorise already even without an SRS. The difficult is applying the formulae to solve a problem. An SRS doesn't teach this.

Nii87 Wrote:I don't see how SRS stuff will help university that much. For instance one of the units I had most trouble with was the vibrations and signal processing (Engineering in general was difficult). This was very maths heavy, but maths that required application of knowledge. You can use SRS to memorise formulae and stuff, but that is easy to memorise already even without an SRS. The difficult is applying the formulae to solve a problem. An SRS doesn't teach this.

in my case:

course: principles of design
definition of design principles (150 in my last course, says my srs)

course: calculus
derivation rules, lists of integrals

course: semiotics
authors and their theories

course: french
srs and languages is like, bread and butter, right?

course: typography
definitions, recognition of styles

the way i see it, the classroom should be used exclusively for practice and clearing doubts, not for handing out raw facts.
as for application, i thinks it works the same way as language does. for example, in mathematics, the way you learn how to write a proof is by massive exposure to proofs, eventually you begin to "absorb the grammar" ("grammar" meaning proof patterns and methods) and massive production of proofs. i'd guess it's the same with most problem-solving courses.
after all, what else is there to learning if not memorization and practice?

Well what if the mathematical proof (or engineering problem) takes several pages of working out? While SRS helps memorise stuff that needs to be memorised, I believe it comes up short as a tool we can use to solve problems more effectively. You can learn formulae, steam tables, and constants through an SRS, but you can't learn how to solve a problem.

Though the thing you mentioned about the 'grammar' of maths is very interesting, and could be true. Its unfortunate I just graduated from uni last year, otherwise I would've put Anki to the test.

dbh2ppa Wrote:course: calculus
derivation rules, lists of integrals


You should release that deck. I wouldn't mind a math refresher.

I can only imagine how much easier my student life would have been had I known about SRS when I started out.

I've never understood why people would want to use Anki for maths. I never memorized anything. If I forgot something (a formula), I'd just figure it out.

If you know why identities are true, you don't need to memorize them.

Can someone give me examples of maths questions that they have in Anki?

wrightak Wrote:I've never understood why people would want to use Anki for maths. I never memorized anything. If I forgot something (a formula), I'd just figure it out.

If you know why identities are true, you don't need to memorize them.

Agreed. Memorizing math isn't the same as learning it. And once you understand the core principals you can recreate any formula you need.

However, I do think an SRS can help you remember something for an effectively longer time. I know a couple years after complex analysis I'd be hard pressed to solve a problem like that. I wonder if the core definitions and laws had been SRSd if I'd be able to keep up the knowledge without using it.

welldone101 Wrote:

wrightak Wrote:I've never understood why people would want to use Anki for maths. I never memorized anything. If I forgot something (a formula), I'd just figure it out.

If you know why identities are true, you don't need to memorize them.

Agreed. Memorizing math isn't the same as learning it. And once you understand the core principals you can recreate any formula you need.

However, I do think an SRS can help you remember something for an effectively longer time. I know a couple years after complex analysis I'd be hard pressed to solve a problem like that. I wonder if the core definitions and laws had been SRSd if I'd be able to keep up the knowledge without using it.

of course, srs'ing won't teach you how to solve problems, but it will keep the tools you need to solve them at your fingertips, giving you the chance to solve many problems and learn how to do that in a lot less time. (massive failure with little cost, for the ajatt readers out there).
on the other hand, i'd love to see anyone try to figure out even the most basic calculus without memorizing first at least the basic properties of real numbers, and some of the axioms of zfc set-theory (along with the time constraints of the common college test). math nowadays is completely axiomatic, like it or not, so you have to memorize at least the basic axioms of whatever field you're working with, and even given that the ammount of time needed to proove the tools you're gonna need from those axioms is way too high for most purposes. memory is essencial in math. (then again, don't trust me on that, i'm only a second year math-school dropuout. perhaps when working with higher mathemathics memory loses some of it's relevance, though i find it unlikely).

What I'm trying to home in on is if you learnt all the memorisable stuff through an SRS, would it make it easier to solve proper problems?

Nii87 Wrote:What I'm trying to home in on is if you learnt all the memorisable stuff through an SRS, would it make it easier to solve proper problems?

precisely!
über-simplified example:
you memorize "2+2=4"
by exposure, you know the usual algorithm for multiple digit sums (the one where you put one number over the other and then sum in columns, remember?)
when solving 22+22, the algoritm will ask you to solve at some point "2+2", and since you've already memorized this, you know immediately it's "4" and move on, instead of wasting time counting... "2... and 1 it makes 3... and another 1... 4!".

Nii87 Wrote:What I'm trying to home in on is if you learnt all the memorisable stuff through an SRS, would it make it easier to solve proper problems?

I don't think so. The only way you get better at solving problems is by practicing. To practice, you need to see different problems. If you see the same problem at gradually increasing intervals (SRS), you're not practicing problem solving, you're just memorizing the solution to a problem.

The only use I can think of is for exams where you're under time pressure and it can be handy to be able to reel formulae off the tip of your tongue.

I specialized in pure mathematics at university and I don't think that having an SRS back then would have helped me much.

A similar discussion is taking place on the Anki forums.

http://groups.google.com/group/ankisrs/b...b2dd9cac58

In it, the maths teacher is proposing giving his kids Anki flash cards with questions like this:

Q: 3x=9, x=?
A: x=3

The first time you see this question, it's fine. But if you repeatedly see it at spaced intervals, you're just going to start remembering that the card with a 3, an x and a 9 has the answer 3. You'll forget why the answer is 3 and you won't remember that you have to divide both sides by 3 in order to get the answer. (Assuming that's the way you like to think about solving it).

While SRSing math problems is of course silly, putting in theorems, rules, axioms, constants, etc would be pretty useful.

With a slight adaption of Anki, it's reasonable to have math problems in SRS.

Here's my thinking - imagine XX number of cards are linked in an SRS. They are different cards, but all about the same math concept such as differentiating SIN or integrating x^3.

So for example, you have 6 different problems all dealing with the same issue. These get linked to a link card in Anki. Link card comes up, Anki shows randomly of the those 6 problems for you to solve. If you pass, link card increases spacing.

With the link card having a random bank to draw upon, it prevents the problems of users memorizing answers when it's the process that's important. The process gets spaced repetition using actual problems to test it out.

Seeing that math and science books have dozens of problems per chapter, it's not hard to get samples. Using a link card concept, students can create a database of math problems, with a small number of link cards to ensure past lessons are not forgotten.

PS: A similar thing can be done with conjugating verbs/adjectives in anki and grammar. Have a large bank of cards dealing grammar points, but only 2 or 3 link cards for them.

That's a really really cool idea NukeMarine. My only problem with that is that for many of the engineering exams you'll get at uni you'll have 3 hours to do it. And there are usually about 3 or 4 questions in the exam!

For a question thats takes an hour to do, you wouldn't want in an SRS. But it might be possible to break that question into smaller chunks, but then you'll have linked cards to linked cards to linked cards.

Anki is a computer program after all, so it wouldn't be hard to have it generate random numbers. That way you could have problems like 3x=9 and then the next time you see the card it says 3x=15. This would be easy to do and wouldn't make any modern computer(or cellphone) even hiccup. It's also easy enough to limit the random numbers, so things aren't too hard for the students.