Comment by hiAndrewQuinn

>[O]ften we teach things initially in simple terms as a way of building up to more complicated explanations. Failing to forget the simpler facts would be a learning failure to a degree.

I've never found remembering the simplified explanation to be a hindrance to learning the more complicated explanation. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I have found times where forgetting the simple explanation before ever getting to the more complicated one meant it felt like I was learning the complicated one from scratch.

>[W]e want people to learn what to do with facts, how to handle and interpret new information, focusing solely on recall doesn’t cover this either.

You can't learn any of that stuff without having the facts at hand first, however.

More importantly, "recall" is a much broader subject than it may sound at first: The ability to tackle novel mathematical theorems is based largely upon one's recall of prior proofs, which I have found to be just as valuable a target for spaced repetition approaches as any. But even if it turned out that wasn't the case, simply separating one's school day into an hour or two of "recall work" followed by 5-6 hours of "dynamic work" where we work with and elaborate upon facts that everyone in the class is statistically guaranteed to remember sounds like a much better use of one's time.

>I'm sure whatever they used to convince people to spend that much money is based on science that isn't just "the tests go better" but actually "the learning is better".

Likewise, I'm sure that science is weaker than it first appears.

I can point you to dozens of studies showing spaced repetition is robust and effective, across a wide variety of domains.

>[S]paced repetition has been part of education since forever hasn't it. Yes it's slightly easier with a PDF. But you'd have to assume they thought of that too...

In fact I only found out about spaced repetition near the end of high school, so no, I wouldn't call it "part of education since forever". In fact I consider the fact it isn't a topic we scream about from the hilltops and make it a known thing for students a great civilization-wide error. It seems closer to an open secret that was a lot less well known even just a decade ago.

It's also not "slightly" easier with a PDF, it's much easier. Individual cards that would take much longer to create by hand (image occlusions in particular) take less than a minute with software. There is a reason I insist upon using ebooks these days, paper books just can't compete with that kind of efficiency.

Yes. Over 12 years of use I have consistently found spaced repetition to be the most enjoyable way to learn basically anything, and essentially the only way to ensure things I don't regularly use as part of my job continue to be things I can remember. Some subjects I have in rotation at the moment: Finnish, Haskell, SQLite database internally, cash management and financial jargon, old photos and video clips of my childhood cat who I loved dearly.

But, more to the point: You seem confused as to the true generality of the technique. Flashcards can be used in much more interesting ways than just checking to see if you can recite all the lines of Homer correctly or something.

The vast majority of cards I have are questions of understanding - e.g. a card like "How many unique strands of DNA can be made from 100 A-T pairs and 100 C-G pairs?" You can't memorize all those digits. You need to remember how to solve the problem, which is quite simple, but not so simple it's worthless for a non-mathematician to solve without pen and paper.