> In one version of the task, one subject (always one—he spurned testing subjects in groups) is presented with four cards lying flat on a table, each with a single-digit number on one face and one of two colors on the other.
From the article. All the needed information is present.
beyondCritics was attempting to be pedantic, and failing due to not reading, that the problem in this linked article was not presented with the context that the cards were always letter/number pairs and never letter/letter pairs (in which case you'd need to check the K card). Just a few sentences earlier in the article from what they quoted, though, it presents what I quoted, that the cards are letter/number pairs.
To support my claim though:
From the experiment in the linked article:
> Four cards are placed on a table in front of you. Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other.
That statement is included in the text provided to participants.
From the original experiment:
> The subjects were told that cards with letters on their front had numbers on their back and vice versa.
Subjects were tested only after being given this information. Satisfied?
> ChatGPT seems to be very good at generating cards btw
So you can get very good at memorizing occassionally incorrect information? If I'm going to put in the effort to drill information into my brain with spaced-repetition, I have a high bar for the accuracy of that information.
I hand write all my cards, and think it's commonly accepted that the manual process of producing the cards is an important first step in the memorization process.
The study isnt correct in its conclusions: People writing stuff down to be used in a card game, arent going to commit info to their memory. They should tell people they will take the paper away at the beginning then do the same study
> 3. I fared better with lots of small, one-sentence cards. My rule of thumb is that a card should fit in a tweet.
Can someone tell me if this is a crazy good idea? Social network + spaced repetition. Why should you build all your own cards? Taking a class with classmates? Create a group & create cards during lecture, review/curate cards afterwards during study session, then rate which ones were most useful after the exam (or homework).
FTA: When I cut the cards, I let you glimpse a few different faces. You conclude the deck contains 52 different cards (No. 1—Pattern recognition). You think you’ve made a choice, just as when you choose between two candidates preselected by entrenched political parties (No. 7—Choice is not freedom).
Subtlety is good here. He's teaching us neuroscience and politics at the same time. :-)
> About 1000 cards now. We do it daily. It's often just a few cards per day, so it takes 1-5 minutes.
1000 cards over 5-6 years is 160-200 per year, so on average less than one a day. Did you start out slow and increased the pace as he grew, or is it more of chunking (e.g. add a few cards per day for some days, then just review for days before adding more)?
I'm sure whatever approach you did was organic and not planned the way I'm writing it, but am curious how it actually evolved.
> Recognizing countries on the map is not trivial. On the playground, he met a kid from Syria. He asked the boy if he lived closer to Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, or Lebanon.
OK, this is beyond simply recognizing the country from its shape. How did he encode what the neighboring countries are?
When learning the countries, does the card show only the outline of that country, or is it more like a map with all countries, and the one under review is highlighted? If the latter, then it makes sense.
> The rest, he's just really proud to know. A kid at school says the moon is a million miles away. He was proud to know the more accurate distance.
Psst... Everyone knows it's 300,000 km away.
<checks>
OK, fine. I memorized it wrong as a kid. Need to add it to my Anki deck ;-)
I got all of them right except 6. My initial response was that you had to turn over all the cards. Thinking about why I chose this option I realised that I was not trusting the rule that a card must have a number on one side if it has a letter on the other side. My experience has made me highly suspicious that the model I have been given by someone is correct so I always like to test the assumptions of the model if possible.
> I saw on more than one occasion grown men brought to tears because they dropped a box of cards scattering them across the floor and they would have to spend many hours sorting them.
I realize I may be a bit late with this suggestion, but why not number the cards, like the pages of a book?
That is more involved than I thought. I was looking for a covert information channel. For instance the assistant could hold the cards in 2 different ways, 4 cards represents 16 bits of information, plus 2 more bits for which card is the high card.
Here is a simpler one that impresses many people. Deal out 3 cards across, return to the top, 3 more cards, and so on until you've dealt out 27 cards in 3 columns. Have the other person pick a card but don't indicate what it is. Ask them to indicate which column has the card. Stack the 3 columns with that in the middle. Now redeal go through the same procedure. Repeat one more time. Now count the cards out. Card #14 is the picked card.
Why does it work? Well the first time you deal it could have been anywhere, the second time it is down to the 3 middle rows, the third time it is in the middle row, then you stacked it in the middle of the deck.
This is exactly how I conceived of it when I first heard of the problem. Pretty sure I remember demonstrating it to people using 10+ playing cards and flipping over all but one of the cards the person didn’t choose.
> Your system would have him spending 33x as much effort maintaining that knowledge as what we're currently doing. A factor of 33 is worth some bookkeeping on my part.
I will grant you that. We only used this strategy for the times tables up to 12x12, which has a finite set of cards (144 if I remember my facts correctly :) ).
If I wanted to do an ever growing set, I might consider this method.
> And, according to the research, long-term retention is worse.
Can you point me at some good research on this area? I believe you, I'd just like to read more, as someone who is interested in this sort of thing.
This reminds me of a self-working trick I saw online in the 90s.
The website shows you a hand of 5 cards, and asks you to pick one card and stare at it intensely. It claims it will read your mind and guess the card. When ready, you will click a button, and 5 new cards are shown - 4 random cards plus the card you thought of.
...
The trick is that the same cards are shown as before, but in different order. Most people only focused on the one card and don't notice that the rest of the cards are the same. It sounds very simple, but it worked on me and all my family members, at least the first time.
I too would be interested in seeing how some example cards are structured - to see how much information is on each side of the card, what the card is comprised of, what sort of things are amenable to cards. As I remember cards have a stimulus and expected response. So there’s a bit of an art in distilling things down so the stimulus triggers the correct mental associations and the response can be related back in a way that matches the expected response.
> I found myself question if someone was card worthy, which was a distraction.
I think having a whole sheet might help. It's not enough to copy everything, but enough not to get sidetracked. Also, you might write down a reference to a page and 1-2 keywords only, or a couple of keywords describing one's own thought regarding a piece of content + a page reference.
From the article. All the needed information is present.
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