Anki

Anki flashcard decks

Anki is a nice program for creating and studying flashcards on a mobile phone. The Android and desktop versions are free, the iPhone version costs $.

Strategy

Anki is useful for learning small, short concepts - not large, sprawling concepts.

If you have a large, complicated concept, split it into parts.

For example, instead of "What is the factory design pattern?", instead ask, "When is a factory design pattern useful?" or "What are the 3 things a singleton implementation requires?"

In addition to making the facts small and consumable, make them imminently practical and driven by experience. (Example: if you're studying a language, don't dump a big word list into flashcards.)

Resetting a Deck

Because Anki thinks it is so great at taking care of your study needs, it thinks no user could possibly ever need to reset a deck. (Why is so much software designed to act like a militant pedant insisting you do it their way or not at all?)

If you get sick of stupid timers and schedules, if you screw things up, or if you can't figure out the system and need to get your flashcards into another more reasonable study program, you can export your deck to an anki file, and uncheck the box about including scheduling info. This strips all the scheduling, due date, times reviewed, and other scheduling crap from the flashcards.

How To Use

To use Anki well uses a little practice. Here's the basic rundown:

• Start with a smaller number of simple cards. Work your way toward more complicated cards and more complicated decks.
• You can back up your deck once it is created by exporting the deck to an Anki file
• Adjust the options for the deck. Set a high limit on the number of cards you'd like to see.
• When you're reviewing cards, you have three options: (1) Repeat again soon, (2) Repeat again later, or (3) Bury it. Don't choose (3) unless you're absolutely, positively sick of that flashcard, and you're convinced you'll remember it 10 years from now. Once Anki decides you know it, it will disappear into a black hole.

Effective Review of Flashcards

Initial Run-Through - Every Time

Once you have your deck and you're familiar with the controls, you'll want to start every study session by reviewing your entire flashcard deck. Only choose option 1 (don't know well, repeat again soon) or option 2 (know well, repeat again later). The first time through the study deck is always the slowest, but (this is important) this is just the starting point. You've seen every single card in the deck, so now you run through the entire deck again. This time, hopefully, more of them will become (2)s instead of (1)s. When you select (1), it means the card is moved just 5-10 cards down in the stack, while (2) moves it down 20 or so cards in the deck. A combination of these two, plus the new cards being introduced, will help keep the entire deck fresh.

Constant Adjustments

As you are working through your study cards, you'll be coming up with better ways to remember things, or images that repeatedly come up and leave you stumped. For example, when memorizing the Dominic System, which consists of associating 100 letter pairs with two-digit numbers, I was getting stumped with the number 37, which becomes CG, associated with the name Carl Gauss. I was struggling to remember this, but every time I saw CG, the words "Computer Graphics" would pop into my mind. So, I adjusted the system to use Buzz Lightyear (a computer graphics generated character) and I chained Buzz Lightyear to Carl Gauss, so now I have two names to associate with 37.

Start Small, Get Bigger

It is also important to start with a small deck - at most, 100 cards. This is a good starting size. From there, you can master your deck of 100 cards. Make adjustments to the cards as you practice.

For effective studying, review your entire deck, and choose either 1 or 2. Eventually you will have seen every card. At this point, you're just getting started.

Review the deck, again and again, until Anki decides you are finished. This will take you through each card about 3 times. If you choose (2) for a card 3 times, Anki decides that's good enough. Eventually you'll get to the end and you can repeat the process later in the day or the next day.

My Anki Decks

Mathematics

• Calculus
• Geometry and Trig
• Algebra

Computer Science

• Data structures
• Algorithms
• Mathematics
• Combinatorics and probability

Java

• Language features
• Implementation of basic OOP features
• Data structures
• Algorithms

Python

• Language features
• Implementation of basic OOP features
• Data structures
• Algorithms

US Presidents

• Presidents, birth/death, start/end, vice presidents, major achievements, foreign and domestic policy
• using the Dominic System

Watergate

• People involved, dates
• See Watergate and Wars of Watergate