Conversation

One of my big tasks for the next year will be to better understand how to write well in the mnemonic medium—and how to help other authors write well. Starting to collect notes here:

notes.andymatuschak.org

Important attributes of good spaced repetition memory prompts

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João Eira

@joaoeira

Sep 10, 2020

Minimum information principle -> well known Redundancy -> One idea attacked from multiple angles instead of a single card Context -> Cards should have cues that elicit the context of the target knowledge (may be something as simple as adding [Javascript] to a card)

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Replying to

@joaoeira

Yes, these seem to be most of what one needs to write good prompts for simple facts. They don’t describe how to encode more complex understandings, though.

5:35 PM · Sep 10, 2020TweetDeck

Replying to

True, that one I haven't solved but

@michael_nielsen

's essay in using Anki for math was revelatory.

João Eira

@joaoeira

Sep 10, 2020

Wozniak has a line in one of his essays that is something like : what separates geniuses from non-geniuses is their ability to represent knowledge in a way that is both easy to remember and easy to use.