Andyʼs working notes
About these notesAbout these notes
Hi! I’m Andy Matuschak. You’ve stumbled upon my working notes. They’re kind of strange, so some context might help.
These notes are mostly written for myself: they’re roughly my thinking environment (Evergreen notes; My morning writing practice). But I’m sharing them publicly as an experiment (Work with the garage door up). If a note seems confusing or under-explained, it’s probably because I didn’t write it for you! Sorry—that’s sort of an essential tension of this experiment (Write notes for yourself by default, disregarding audience).
For now, there’s no index or navigational aids: you’ll need to follow a link to some starting point. You might be interested in §What’s top of mind.
👋 Andy (email, Twitter, main personal site)
PS: My work is made possible by a crowd-funded research grant from my Patreon community. You can become a member to support future work, and to read patron-only updates and previews of upcoming projects.
PS: Many people ask, so I’ll just note here: no, I haven’t made this system available for others to use. It’s still an early research environment, and Premature scaling can stunt system iteration.
Quantum Country readers reliably develop detailed retention for embedded questions
Late-2019 schedule
For late-2019 schedule data, see After five repetitions, most Quantum Country readers reach at least 1 month of demonstrated retention for at least 95% of questions
See also Quantum Country users rarely forget after demonstrating five-day retention
Early-2019 schedule
All this data is among readers who answered 80%+ of QCVC questions in the essay before their first review session.
After 6 repetitions (using an earlier, less aggressive SRS schedule), most 2019H1 users average about 54 days of retention per question.
The median 2019H2 reader had demonstrated 2-week retention on 95%+ of QCVC prompts by session 9. Source These users average about 24 days of retention per question after 3 repetitions of every prompt. We don’t have data on later repetition numbers yet.
But is this just a survivorship effect? Would these readers have developed this retention in any case? Or is it a selection effect—did these readers already have detailed retention of this material? What is the causal impact of the mnemonic medium’s review sessions on reader retention?