Examples over Principles

Here's something that took me a long time to realize. Memorizing the text of an abstract principle is worthless. Concrete examples are the gold standard of SRS.

This is unpleasant, because it means you can't just paste your textbook's bolded theorems, formulas, and facts, into Anki. Instead, you have to about five or ten concrete situations to which the abstract knowledge applies, and turn those into cards.

Below are examples of cards that state a principle, along with how they can be fixed to test a concrete example.

This card tests a principle. The better card has an example of two full houses, and asks which wins. That's concrete, and reflects how you'll use this knowledge: to break ties between full houses. In other words, it's the difference between "can you explain this procedure to me" and "can you carry the procedure out."

This card is trying to teach several things, all in the abstract. It should be broken into the following cards.

• The board is 3♠ 6♠ Q♣, and you have 4♣ 5♣. What's your hand called? (An open ended straight draw)
• The flop comes 7♠ T♣ 2♠ and your friend says he has the open-ender. What two cards does he have? (8, 9)
• The board is 3♠ 6♠ Q♣, and you have 4♣ 5♣. How many outs do you have? (8)

Notice how each of these is a concrete example, and reflects a plausible situation from the real world.

The main problem with this card is feel. But it also fails in concreteness. To be more concrete, the card should be split into several cards:

• Can you raise J♠ J♣ under the gun?
• Can you raise T♠ T♣ under the gun?
• Can you raise Q♠ Q♣ under the gun?

The abstract and the concrete cards here encode the same knowledge. The problem with the abstract card is that when you have QQ under the gun, you have to remember which principle you're supposed to be applying. Nobody prompts you with "what's the worst pair you should open under the gun?" That's really hard to do.

But if you've been practicing the concrete cards, your brain recognizes the form of the problem: "I have KK under the gun; oh right, I recognize this situation and have done a bunch of problems like this, I'm only supposed to raise JJ or better."

It's the same as feynman's

This card should be "what's the time signature of the measure below?" This forces you to apply the knowledge against a concrete example. It also gives the card a better feel.

Awful card for several reasons (map of the cat, list, tests principles instead of examples). A more concrete card here would say, "Melissa has the following job and is unsatisfied. According to self-determination theory, what is she missing?" and the answer will be "being good at what she does."

This card should be split into examples:

• f(x) = x^2 + 2. Is f in theta(n^2)?
• f(x) = x^2 + x. Is f in theta(n^2)?
• f(x) = x^2 log(x). Is f in theta(n^2)?

Again, should be split into examples:

• Evaluate (false && 8).
• Evaluate (true && null).
• Evaluate (false && null).
• Evaluate (4 && 3).

A better card is "on line three of this assembly program, will PF be set?"