"Enhancing human learning via spaced repetition optimization", Tabibian et al 2019: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/01/18/1815156116
> Understanding human memory has been a long-standing problem in various > scientific disciplines. Early works focused on characterizing human memory > using small-scale controlled experiments and these empirical studies later > motivated the design of spaced repetition algorithms for efficient > memorization. However, current spaced repetition algorithms are rule-based > heuristics with hard-coded parameters, which do not leverage the automated > fine-grained monitoring and greater degree of control offered by modern > online learning platforms. In this work, we develop a computational framework > to derive optimal spaced repetition algorithms, specially designed to adapt > to the learners’ performance. A large-scale natural experiment using data > from a popular language-learning online platform provides empirical evidence > that the spaced repetition algorithms derived using our framework are > significantly superior to alternatives. More popularized overview: http://learning.mpi-sws.org/memorize/ Dataset/code: https://github.com/duolingo/halflife-regression --------- It's unclear to me if this is superior in practice to any of SuperMemo/Anki/Mnemosyne's current algorithms, since they don't directly compare them (just to a uniform strawman baseline, and a 'threshold' of unclear origin) or implement it on real-world users. They are proud of their optimality guarantee, but of course that's only optimal based on a specific set of assumptions and algorithm classes, like being limited to a stochastic algorithm. (There might be some other limits like being efficient asymptotically rather than at all time-scales.) Nevertheless, it's cool that the result is *so* simple, and control theory is a very rich mathematical area, so more realistic optimal algorithms can probably be devised. (And the topic of 'point processes' is relevant to me for my interest in various kinds of 'anti' spaced repetition, for note-reviewing or movie-watching, which I've mentioned before. -- gwern https://www.gwern.net -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mnemosyne-proj-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to mnemosyne-proj-users@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mnemosyne-proj-users/CAMwO0gy_KQDo%3DuWHWtAsmXFjAALo72MckwakSYXqfzCXT8qMig%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
