Recently, I brought the spaced repetition system software Anki back into my life. For a while, between 2019 and 2023, I was using it frequently to practice learning French. Anki is a remarkable tool and allowed me to learn 5,000 French words (and a few other things too).

What brought me back to Anki was learning that there have been some updates to the "algorithm" used to determine when cards should be shown to users. If you browse some top posts on the Anki subreddit, you'll see that several contributors have been working on refining this memory algorithm to offer the most results for the least work—I suppose that's what an algorithm is, after all.

Needless to say, my ears perked up when I read about people trying to optimize human memory and recall. So I reinstalled Anki and decided to purchase the iOS version for my phone. Having Anki on my phone makes a much bigger difference than having just the desktop application. Now, when I'm stealing slivers of time from my day, I'm able to do a little recall practice and work towards improving my memory about various things.

I've even gone searching for the French decks I used to use, which have since been updated, and have reinstalled them. It's been fun and impressive to see that even the older algorithm was working quite well—I've been able to recall words that were probably set to only be seen after years had passed.

I also picked up a deck for learning geography. I never thought to do this before! I have a good friend who can name just about any capital of any country, recognize flags, or identify the shapes of countries easily. I was impressed when I learned this about him and decided I want to try to do the same. As I've gone about learning these different capitals, flags, and countries, I've realized the extent of my ignorance when it comes to geography. I've learned so much about different countries already. Just out of natural curiosity about these places, I've gone on Wikipedia to read more about them, and that's been very satisfying.

I also found a tool (built with web assembly!) that converts multi-line poetry into Anki cards for memorization. The intent expressed as an example on the website is to memorize Hamlet, but I've been using it to memorize song lyrics and it's pretty effective.

What I’ve been most surprised to (re)learn, is how flash cards and engaging my memory is pushing my curiousity. I think this is one of the better parts of school — seeing what your mind can do with new information, and following your mind going to new places:

Did you know the capital of Vanuatu is Port Vila?

I didn’t even know Vanuatu existed.