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Comment by cerrelio | Hacker News Reader

This is the subject I tackled in grad school. It was super interesting, because many people still believe that memorizing stuff is best if you cram for an extended period of time. Showing them that just a few minutes of review at properly spaced intervals leads to better memorization floored most of the participants.

My particular research was the quantify the effects of the variance in follow-up exposure times. I did this research 10 years ago before smartphones were available. The participants had to physically be in a classroom in front of a computer to get the treatment. So in our experiment's case, the effects of variance were non-negligible and needed to be investigated. If smartphones had been around then, we could have tested so many more hypotheses.

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The existence of spaced repetition also shows how dysfunctional educational systems (both public and private) are at making evidence-based improvements. If a method with such a clear overwhelming advantage at the stated goal isn't incorporated by schools, what hope is there that they'll make improvements where the evidence is hazier?

One of the most cited papers in the area is Frank Dempster's paper about the failure of educational systems to adopt spaced repetition: http://andrewvs.blogs.com/usu/files/the_spacing_effect.pdf Although the paper was was written almost 30 years, little has changed.

It is taken up, just not everywhere and not necessarily at scale. I've personally seen it used eg at Finnish schools - but there the teacher chooses the tool, not the government, so i don't know how common it is.

With more and more devices in class you can expect directed spaced repetition to hit hard. But actually i don't know a single person who didn't at some point get the instruction/advice to use flashcards for foreign language vocabulary. That being said it's not used much in other subjects - because no serious educationalist thinks education is about hammering facts into the brain. It's much more about concepts and critical thinking, at least in any semi-modern classroom .

Cramming might actually be the most time-effective strategy for a short recall period (one off exam). But naturally not if the aim is long term recall.

It is. We were specifically dealing with ESL/second-language learning though. Long term retention is necessary for fluency. If you want to pass a driver's exam or material you don't really care about beyond passing a test, then cram. Although in most classes, you will probably want to retain knowledge beyond a month in order to do well on a final.

can you compare this with memory palace and other, alternative techniques, such as using the information to be learned actively and immediately?

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