| Current mood: |  excited |
| Current music: | Final Fantasy Symphonic Suite |
| Entry tags: | scrabble, zyzzyva |
Automatic Spaced Repetition functional in Zyzzyva
Last night I finally made functional what I'm calling the Automatic Spaced Repetition (ASR) feature in Zyzzyva. The main idea is an implementation of the Leitner cardbox system, which is a method of reviewing flash cards for maximum long-term retention. All flash cards (in this case, alphagrams) start out in cardbox 0, and the contents of cardbox 0 are reviewed every day. When you get a question right, it goes into cardbox 1. Periodically you will review the contents of cardboxes other than 0... if you get a question from cardbox 1 right, then it goes into cardbox 2. Then into cardbox 3, etc. Anytime you get a question wrong, it goes back into cardbox 0.
The magic of ASR is that it will keep track of where all your flash cards are, and will automatically present them to you at appropriate intervals. As I mentioned, cardbox 0 is reviewed every day, and higher cardboxes are scheduled for review at increasingly longer intervals. For example, when a question is placed into cardbox 1, it's scheduled for review after 4 days. In cardbox 2, after 7 days; cardbox 3, 12 days; cardbox 4, 20 days... and so on, until cardbox 10 and above, which are reviewed every 480 days. All questions in the cardbox system will be reviewed at some point, but the ones you tend to get wrong will be reviewed more often. I gather that it's a lot like SuperMemo, though I've never used that program.
Anyway, it's functional, and I've started trying it out. Last night I imported all the 4s into the system, and a few thousand 7s and 8s. As I test it, I plan to continue adding more 5s, 7s, and 8s to get a feel for about how quickly I'll want to introduce new material. I'm excited to see how it does. I think this will be a big step forward for word study using Zyzzyva.
Unfortunately, the next release of Zyzzyva won't be for a while yet, because this feature needs a lot of polish and probably a fair amount of work yet before it's done, and I also have more features and bug fixes to complete before the next release. I'm hoping the next version will be 1.0. But if you'd like to start trying out the ASR feature right now (and can build Zyzzyva yourself from source code), you can do so by looking behind the cut...
First, check out the Zyzzyva trunk from its Subversion repository, here:
http://svn.pietdepsi.com/repos/projects/zyzzyva/trunk
WARNING: You do so at your own risk, and I provide no official support for anything other than official releases. If you get the latest trunk, you might want to make a backup of the .zyzzyva directory in your home directory before running it... just in case. If you're still interested, then do the following to get the cardbox system started:
- Find some words you'd like to add to the system, by doing a search.
- Right-click the search result list, and choose "Add list to Cardbox".
- A confirmation window will appear, with a checkbox labeled "Estimate cardbox based on past performance". Since 0.14.0, Zyzzyva has been tracking your performance on every quiz question, and leaving this box checked will allow it to place questions directly into cardboxes other than 0. For example, if Zyzzyva has recorded that you've gotten a question correct the last 3 times you've tried it, it will go directly into cardbox 3. Uncheck this box if you want all the questions to go into cardbox 0.
- Click OK, and the words will be added to the cardbox system. If you've selected a lot of words, this may take a minute or two.
- Click the Quiz button to start a new quiz. Change the Quiz Method to "Cardbox". This will cause the quiz to present only alphagrams that are in the cardbox system, and that are ready for review. For this reason, you can make the search specification extremely wide, such as "Length: Max 7, Min 7". This will find all the 7s, but the quiz will only consist of 7s that are in the system and ready for review.
- That's it! If you will want to take this quiz regularly, you can save the quiz using the Save Quiz button. But you cannot save your progress on a Cardbox quiz, because your progress is automatically tracked in the cardbox system, not in the quiz save file.
I'm very excited about how cool this might be. If you're able and willing to be a guinea pig, I would greatly appreciate feedback. The nature of the system means that it might take a fairly long time (weeks, I'd guess) to get a feel for how well it's doing, and for you to see personal improvement because of it. But as far as long-term studying and retention go, I think it will be incredible.
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saganist) wrote,
