Writing good spaced repetition memory prompts is hard

People regard flashcards as something trivial from their school days, so they don’t take writing them very seriously. But it’s awfully hard to write good prompts for a Spaced repetition memory system. For example, good prompts:

• access an idea from multiple angles
• capture one precise thought (likely reflective of “Chunks” in human cognition)
• avoid unintentional ambiguity
• are concise
• get to what really matters about the topic, not just what’s easy to memorize

For more, see: Important attributes of good spaced repetition memory prompts

It’s harder than people think

Unfortunately, it’s not obvious when the prompts you’ve written are bad, so people often don’t realize that their prompts are bad. This can cause them to underrate the performance or overrate the tedium of spaced repetition memory practice. More: To what extent do review sessions offer prompt-writing feedback?

One solution: The mnemonic medium may help scaffold prompt-writing through author-provided prompts

It’s taxing even if you know how

Even if one develops the skill to write good prompts, it’s quite time-consuming and cognitively taxing to do it. I believe that this is another significant barrier to widespread adoption.

One solution: The mnemonic medium supplies expert-authored prompts to remove the burden of prompt-writing. Or, maybe Using machine learning to generate good spaced repetition prompts from explanatory text.

References

Matuschak, A., & Nielsen, M. (2019, October). How can we develop transformative tools for thought? https://numinous.productions/ttft

Nielsen, M. (2018). Augmenting Long-term Memory. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics - Michael Nielsen

https://andymatuschak.org/prompts

Anki Practice Cards: Language, Music, Mathematics - Album on Imgur some examples and notes from Eric Siggy

Important attributes of good spaced repetition memory prompts

This note collects ideas about how to encode knowledge into Spaced repetition memory system prompts, both to support memory of facts but also to foster richer understanding (Spaced repetition memory systems can be used to develop conceptual understanding).

See How to write good prompts (2020) for a published manuscript on this topic.

Basic attributes of prompt-writing:

• Spaced repetition memory prompts should be concise
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should usually focus on one atomic unit
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should encode ideas from multiple angles
  • Spaced repetition memory prompts should connect and relate ideas
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should unambiguously produce a specific answer
  • Prompts must make clear what “shape” of answer they expect
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should ensure reviewers must retrieve answers from memory
  • Avoid yes-no spaced repetition memory prompts
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should be written to discourage shallow “pattern matching”
• Beware set\/enumeration SRS prompts
• Cloze deletion prompts seem to produce less understanding than question-answer pairs in spaced repetition memory systems
• Expert response heuristic, after Issa Rice

“Covering” material:

• Avoid orphan spaced repetition memory prompts

Meta / mental models:

• A pattern language of prompt-writing
• Rule of thumb: write more spaced repetition prompts than seems natural
• Spaced repetition prompt design is about designing tasks for your future self

Related: The “reflected essay” metaphor for the goal for the mnemonic medium

References

Matuschak, A. (2020). How to write good prompts: using spaced repetition to create understanding. https://andymatuschak.org/prompts

See section Improving the mnemonic medium: making better cards in How can we develop transformative tools for thought? and Nielsen (2018, 2019).

Nielsen, M. (2018). Augmenting Long-term Memory. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics - Michael Nielsen

Piotr Wozniak - Effective learning - Twenty rules of formulating knowledge

Soren Bjornstad’s patterns

Fernando Boretti: Effective Spaced Repetition