Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne for Maemo is a port of well-known flash-card tool Mnemosyne to Maemo platform.

The Mnemosyne software resembles a traditional flash-card program to help you memorise question/answer pairs, but with an important twist: it uses a sophisticated algorithm to schedule the best time for a card to come up for review. Difficult cards that you tend to forget quickly will be scheduled more often, while Mnemosyne won't waste your time on things you remember well.

Spaced Repetition

When you have memorised something, you need to review that material, otherwise you will forget it. However, as you probably know from experience, it is much more effective to space out these revisions over the course over several days, rather than cramming all the revisions in a single session. This is what is called the spacing effect.

During the past 120 years, there has been considerable research into these aspects of human memory (by e.g. Ebbinghaus, Mace, Leitner and Wozniak). Based on the work of these people, it was shown that in order to get the best results, the intervals between revisions of the same card should gradually increase. This allows you to focus on things you still haven't mastered, while not wasting time on cards you remember very well.

You can find more information about spaced repetition in this wikipedia article.

It is clear that a computer program can be very valuable in assisting you in this process, by keeping track of how difficult you find an card and by doing the scheduling of the revisions. Let's see how this works in practice in the Mnemosyne program.

The Mnemosyne algorithm is very similar to SM2 used in one of the early versions of SuperMemo. There are some modifications that deal with early and late repetitions, and also to add a small, healthy dose of randomness to the intervals.

Supermemo now uses SM11. However, we are a bit skeptical that the huge complexity of the newer SM algorithms provides for a statistically relevant benefit. But, that is one of the facts we hope to find out with our data collection.

We will only make modifications to our algorithms based on common sense or if the data tells us that there is a statistically relevant reason to do so.

How do I add cards?

You can make your flash cards however you want. One point to keep in mind, though, is that it will probably be easier on you if you limit each flashcard to one "thing" you are trying to remember.

An exception to this is foreign language study, where you have a word to memorize and you want to learn both the meaning and the pronunciation-- Mnemosyne includes a special feature for this.

For more recommendations on how to make the cards, you can read 20 Rules of Formulating Knowledge from the SuperMemo website. SuperMemo is the commercial software that inspired Mnemosyne.

Grading 101

The software will present you with a question, and your task is trying to remember the answer. Afterwards, you rate yourself on a scale between 0 and 5. These ratings will be used in computing the optimal revision schedule. Let's see what these grades mean.

Grades 0 and 1 are used if you don't know the answer yet, or if you have forgotten it. A card with grade 1 is starting to get more familiar than one with grade 0, and will be repeated less often.

The software will keep on asking you these questions until you give them a grade 2 or higher (the exact grade doesn't matter). Grade 2 basically means that you think you'll be able to remember the card for at least one or two days. It signals the transition between short and long term memory.

So now you've memorised this new card. Mnemosyne will next try to make sure that you do not forget it anymore. It will schedule the next revision of this card to some future date, when it thinks you'll still be able to remember it with some effort, without having forgotten it completely. This is the most efficient for the learning process.

If in the future Mnemosyne asks you the question too soon, and you're able to remember it without any effort, you rate the card a 5. The program will take this into account by waiting a lot longer before asking you this question again. (If you know a card really well, you may need to consistently give it a 5 the first several times. As long as you keep giving the card a 4 or 5, Mnemosyne will keep increasing the interval-- there is no limit, and cards will gradually develop a year or more between repetitions).

If Mnemosyne gets it just right, so that you remember it, albeit with some effort, you use grade 4.

If on the other hand it takes you significant effort to remember the answer, and you think the software has waited too long to ask you this question, then rate the card 3.

If you fail to remember it altogether, rate it either 0 or 1, and Mnemosyne will keep on asking you this question until you think you'll be able to remember it again for a few days.

For best results, it is suggested to do your revisions every day, although Mnemosyne will try to cope as well as possible if you postpone your revisions or if you want to learn ahead of time.

Initial grades for cards

When first entering cards, you will have to assign a grade. If you don't know the card, give it a 0 or 1. If you do know the card, give higher grades, and the higher the grade, the longer the initial interval will be.

Reviewing the cards

When you start Mnemosyne, it will automatically present you with any cards that have been scheduled for review that day (plus any cards from previous days that you missed). To do your review, simply click on Show Answer, add a grade, and you're on to the next card.

For the best performance of your memory and the Mnemosyne algorithm, you should do your entire scheduled review each day. If this is not possible, it's not a major worry-- Mnemosyne will automatically postpone the cards for you. However, if you frequently miss days, your recall will suffer.

Oranizing your cards using tags

To divide your entire card set to parts we recommend using tags. You can assign several tags to one card. When you activate or deactivate tags tagged cards are included or excluded from the review process respectively.

Working with large numbers of new cards

By default, Mnemosyne will only show you 10 different cards you've put in grade 0 at once. This is because it does not make sense to try and memorise e.g. 100 new cards all at once.

We recommend only going through a limited number of new cards each day, in order to help Mnemosyne achieve a better spread of your workload when reviewing those cards again.

Maximum interval between repetitions

There is no maximum interval between repetitions, and this period can exceed one year.

Dealing with large numbers of cards to review

Don't worry too much! Do as many cards as you feel like to catch up, the rest will be automatically rescheduled to the future.

Advanced Grading

Here is some additional information about what happens when you grade cards. This information is not necessary to successfully use the program and is intended only for advanced users.

If you grade a card successfully (2-5), the card is scheduled again for a future date. If you grade a card unsuccessfully (0-1), the card is placed in the "unmemorized" pile and is available again for review after you finish the repetitions scheduled for the current day.

All cards have an "easiness" factor which the algorithm uses to schedule the interval between repetitions. It is basically the factor with which the old interval is multiplied in order to get the new one. Note that for the first repetitions, the intervals corresponding to the different grades won't be very different, but as you see the card more often, the differences become larger. The default value of the easiness is 2.5, and it cannot go below 1.3, so intervals always increase if you grade a card 2 or higher. Also note that for the first repetitions, the intervals corresponding to the different grades won't be very differentThe easiness factor is not generally presented to the user because its usefulness is limited to the algorithm's computations.

If you select grade 4, the easiness factor is unchanged and the card is scheduled for future repetition based on the previous record of repetitions.

If you select grade 5, the easiness factor is increased and the card is scheduled for future repetition based on the previous record of repetitions.

If you select grade 2 or 3, the easiness factor is decreased and the card is scheduled for future repetition based on the previous record of repetitions.

If you select grade 0 or 1, the easiness factor is unchanged and the card is put back in the stack of unmemorised cards.

Main menu

Main menu is the place user see first after running a program. And this is the place user go when she exits one of the working modes. Note, that it's possible to bypass main menu and open review mode on program startup (see Settings section below).

Input mode

Input mode is used to enter new cards. Lets look at the controls in this mode. At the left there are four controls: Type, Kind, Tags and Menu.

Upper control is 'Type'. For text cards you can choose one of the following types:

'Front to back' - the simplest type of card with question and answer fields.

'Three-sided' cards have question, prononciation and answer fields.

'Both ways' is for creation 2 cards: question-answer and answer- question. Sometimes it helps to memorise facts better if you use direct and back order of cards. 'Both ways' helps you with this.

'Cloze' is for creation cloze deletion cards. Parts of the question surraunded by asterisks will be removed from the text to create cards. For example "The political parties in the US are the *democrats* and the *republicans*." gives you the following 2 cards: Q:The political parties in the US are the ... and the republicans. A:democrats. Q:The political parties in the US are the democrats and the ... A:republicans. You can use whatever amount of cloze deletions in the text you want. It's not limited by 2 entries shown in the example.

Next control is 'Kind'. You can chose between text, sound and pictures. Note that it's only possible to choose non-text kind of cards(sounds or pictures) for 'Front to back' type of cards.

'Text content' means that only text will be used as question.

'Sound content' means that sound file will be used as question.

'Image content' means that image file will be used as question.

Next control is 'Tags'. You can create tags and assign them to the current card.

Type, kind and assigned tags are preserved between sessions, so you don't need to choose them more often than needed. Be careful with this, especially with tags. If you don't want the same tags to be assigned to all cards you're entering you should check them and change.

The latest control in the left panel is 'Menu'. It's used to go to the Main menu.

In right panel there are 6 grades from 0(totally unknown card) to 5(known and very good memorized card). By default grade 0 is used in the input mode. However, any grade you choose will be used as the default for future cards. There is no special control for card creation. Card will be created when grade button is pressed.

Review mode

This is a main mode of the application. Most of the user's time is spent here. This mode implements spaced repetition technique. It shows cards in the order, determined by the scheduling algorithm and user's job is to grade them.

Cards and grade panel look the same as in the input mode, only left panel is different.

First(upper) control there is 'Statistics' button. It will show you statistics for the current card and overall program statistics. It actually brings you to the Statistics mode (see below).

Second control is 'Pronounce'. It used to prononce the text. This feature is available only when text-to-speach program Espeak is installed.

Next control is 'Edit card'. It allows user to edit current card (see Edit mode below).

And the next one is 'Add card'. Program switches to Input mode when user presses this button.

'Delete card' is the next control. Use it if you want to delete current card.

And the last one is 'Main menu'. It's the same as in almost all modes. Use it to switch to Main menu.

For each scheduled card question will be shown first. You should try to recall the answer, then press on the answer field with the text 'Show answer' in it. After that answer will be shown in answer field and you should grade it. See Grading 101 for the details how to grade cards properly. As soon as card is graded next scheduled card will be shown. When all scheduled cards are reviewed you'll be asked if you want to review unscheduled cards. We'd not recommend to do that. It's better to add new cards instead and review only scheduled cards. It will allow you to utilize the power of program more efficiently. However, if you understand what you're doing you can review cards ahead of schedule.

Edit mode

This is the mode you can get to from review mode if you press 'Edit' button. It has the same view and controls as Input mode and used for editing current card.

Tags mode

This mode is used for tag activation and deactivation. Cards with only non-active tags assigned to it will not be scheduled for review. So, using tagging it's easy to devide your set of cards into groups and activate/deactivate them when needed.

Selecting 'Statistics' button in this mode will show you statistics for all tags. It actually brings you to the Statistics mode (see below).

Settings

This mode is for configuring the program. It has 3 parts:

• general settings,
• appearance,
• text to speech settings.

You can switch between them using controls on the left panel.

In 'general settings view' you can specify directories for images and sounds, fullscreen mode and opening review mode on startup. Directories for images and sounds are used when you create cards with sounds or pictures. Program will be taking pictures and/or sounds from those directories.

In 'appearance view' you can set font size for the text in your cards.

In 'text-to-speech settings' you can set language, speed and pitch and switch between male and female voices.

Stats

In this mode you can see 3 types of statistics:

• current card statistics,
• grade statistics for all cards,
• grade statistics for tags.

You can also switch between them using controls on the left panel.