learning, repeating, knowing

Student preparing for an exam Everybody has made the experience that learning can be both fun and tedious depending on the setting. If there is something, which is really interesting for you, then learning is a breeze and most things stick easily in your memory. However, learning things, which are uninteresting and boring is much more unpleasant. And whatever you have learned evaporates quickly out of your head again.
But even if you are interested in what you learn, these things too will drop out of your memory, unless you repeat them regularly.

But how many times should you repeat? Reasonably, only as much as necessary. Why would you waste your precious time on useless repetitions? It is very simple indeed: just repeat, before you forget and you spend the minimum time for repetition and retention of your hard earned knowledge.

But how do you know, when you will forget? Well, that’s tougher. Generally speaking, you don’t. And there’s the catch. Unless you know when you will forget you cannot properly schedule your repetitions. If you repeat too frequently, you will loose a lot of time. If you repeat too rarely, you will have forgotten again most of the stuff you’ve learned. Even worse, not all items stick equally well in your memory. Some you will forget within hours or days, and with others you can look at them once and remember them even months later.

Flashcard Learner keeps track of all your items and how well you performed on each individual one. Additionally Flashcard Learner starts adapting to your unique learning and retention capabilities and knows successively better which items have to be repeated just before you might forget them again. Flashcard Learner uses adaptive spaced repetition learning, which guarantees that you won’t loose time doing useless repetitions. You repeat only those items, which absolutely have to be repeated.

You will spend as little time as necessary on learning a card. You will see the cards as little as 6 times in the first year, and later even more rarely.

Flashcard Learner guarantees you full retention of the learned material in the least possible amount of time.

Even if you spend as little as 10 to 15 Minutes a day learning some items (like languages, medicine, law, Kanjis, whatever you like), within only a month you will be able to learn 500-700 items and have generally a retention rate of 90-95%.

How does Flashcard Learner work?

Flashcard Learner is based on the scientifically proven Spaced Repetition method.

The German psychologist and scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus was the first to perform elaborate and scientific experiments on how we learn and forget. He worked for years to refine his experiments and theories until he finally published his groundbreaking findings in his book “Über das Gedächtnis” (1885), which was later translated into English as “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology” (1913).

He found out that how we learn and how we forget is predictable. In fact he analyzed in detail exactly how much we forget in time. His fundamental finding, one that was confirmed in hundreds of scientific studies over time, is the forgetting curve. The forgetting curves shows exactly how humans, and as it turns out other living organisms, forget an initially learned fact. He found that the forgetting curve is exponential. That means that the retention rate (the percentage of what we still remember) decays in the first days and weeks extremely rapidly. In fact the decay is so strong, that we forget almost 80% of all new learned items within one to two weeks. That’s right: from what we originally learned we remember only about 20% after a couple of days. Frightening, isn’t it? Later on the rate at which we forget the last 20% of what is still left is less steep. As you can see in the plot below the steepest decay of retention is in the first several days.

Results of the the research by Hermann Ebbinghaus. The forgetting curve decays exponentially.

Isn’t there anything we can do about that?

Sure there is! The magic word is called REPETITION.

In order to keep what you have learned you have to repeat it. Of course, there is a smart way to do it, and many that are not so smart.

The probably most unsatisfying way is to repeat whatever you learned again and again. Over and over. There are, however, only 24 hours a day. So you can repeat only so much.

The other extreme is not to repeat at all. You will forget quickly pretty much everything what you learn. Not very gratifying either.

In between those extremes there is one sweet spot. One point which gives you a maximal return of your investment of time and effort.

Scientific studies have proven, the most optimal way to repeat is the time when you just still know a fact, but are about to forget it. That’s where you get the most profits out of it.

Let’s have a look at a plot.

Flashcard Learner spaced repetition algorithm. Refresh information at optimal spacings to keep the retention rate above 90 percent.

Let’s assume you would like to know a certain number of data (flashcards) at any given time better than 90%.

The first time you learn those flashcards your forgetting curve is very steep. If you don’t repeat the new flashcards you might as well not learn them.

Flashcard Learner calculates exactly when you have reached the 90% retention rate and presents you with the list of flashcards that have to be repeated. When you repeated them you are again on 100%. Notice, however, what has happened to the projected forgetting curve. Since you repeated the flashcards while you still knew them (90% of them) the forgetting curve after the first repetition became much less steep. Consequently the interval until you have to repeat them again grew.

Again Flashcard Learner calculates when you have to repeat the flashcards before you go below a certain threshold of the retention rate and presents you with an updated list of flashcards to repeat after that period. Once you repeated the flashcards, you are again on 100%. But this time the forgetting curve has become even flatter.

Every time Flashcard Learner calculates the new intervals after successful repetition you can see that the intervals get longer and longer. In fact, they become so long, that you won’t even believe it. Cards, which you have repeated successfully for 6-7 times will be scheduled for repetition only once a year or even less frequently! Why waste time with repetitions, that don’t bring you ahead? Exactly! Flashcard Learner serves you only, what you really, really need to repeat before you forget it. It saves you countless hours of useless, mind-numbing repetitions and guarantees you 90-95% recall of everything you learn at any given time.

You can use the saved time to learn even more or enjoy time with your friends and family.

Flashcard Learner keeps track of every single flashcard and calculates the best spacing intervals (spacing effect) for each card individually. Flashcard Learner takes all the activity out of learning. You will get the most out of your study efforts which the least amount of time.