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Quantified Self 2011, May 29 Nick Winter How can we learn faster while remembering more? How can we keep track of what we’ve learned? How can we evaluate the effectiveness of different learning strategies? What can we do to increase our mental performance? Let’s get smart about learning.
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Two Topics Today
Measuring Learning
+
Measuring Cognition
Measuring Learning
(measuring our learning speed and how much we remember)
Tracking it
Improving it
Ebbinghaus and Memory
Spaced Repetition
Spaced Repetition Systems (SRS)
Anki, SuperMemo Skritter (my baby)
What Can You SRS?
Obvious
• Vocabulary/Languages
• Science
• School stuff
• Phone numbers
• Names and faces
• Any facts, really
Not obvious
• Self-help/habits
• Music
• How to deal with police
• What organic/free range/grass-fed/certified humane actually mean
• Anything chunkable
What I’m SRSing
• Chinese
• Spanish
• Morse Code
• Braille
• Chess
• Rationality techniques
• Biases and fallacies
• Social skills
• People I meet
• Anatomy
• Account numbers
• Poetry
• Cooking
• Massage
• Investing
• Lots of nonfiction books
Super Simple Self Experiments
Super Simple Self Experiments
Measuring Cognition
(measuring the performance of our brains)
Why?
How?
Brain Performance is Important
+10 IQ = $XXXXX?
2x focus = $XXXXX?
You Can Pump Up Your Brain (probably)
You could try…
Walking, standing, butter, fermented foods, warm showers, smart drugs, meditation, breathing exercises, biofeedback, fish oil, flaxseed oil, MCT oil, yoga, alcohol, yams, coffee, mint tea, creatine, winter swimming, dual n-back, and sleeping a lot!
You Can Pump Up Your Brain (probably)
And you might not want to eat…
Raw carrots, raw bell peppers, peanut butter, walnuts, pure sugar, bananas, raw apples, grains, tofu, onions, mushrooms, lactose, chocolate, nuts, coffee, cheese, or processed foods!
You Can Pump Up Your Brain (probably)
• Tons of ways
• Most won’t work for you
• How to find the right few?
• Just try them and measure the results!
Cool Experiments that Worked
• Seth Roberts:
Butter + Flaxseed Oil + Warm Showers = Faster Arithmetic
• Dave Asprey:
Not Eating Wheat = Way Better at Freecell
• Piotr Wozniak
Free-Running Sleep = Better Memory During SRS
How to Measure Brain Performance?
• Some possible tests:
Psychomotor Vigilance Test, sightreading music,
Continuous Performance Tasks, typing speed tests,
Test of Variables of Attention, Sudoku, crosswords,
arithmetic, solitaire, blitz go, blitz chess, brain training
games, dual n-back, Quake 3, Grid Wars, Tetris,
Minesweeper, or just plain thinking about how sharp you
are at the moment
How to Measure Brain Performance?
• Some possible tests that don’t have a big learning effect:
Psychomotor Vigilance Test, sightreading music,
Continuous Performance Tasks, typing speed tests,
Test of Variables of Attention, Sudoku, crosswords,
arithmetic, solitaire, blitz go, blitz chess, brain training
games, dual n-back, Quake 3, Grid Wars, Tetris,
Minesweeper, or just plain thinking about how sharp you
are at the moment
How to Measure Brain Performance?
• Some possible tests that don’t have a big learning effect
and are reliable:
Psychomotor Vigilance Test, sightreading music,
Continuous Performance Tasks, typing speed tests,
Test of Variables of Attention, Sudoku, crosswords,
arithmetic, solitaire, blitz go, blitz chess, brain training
games, dual n-back, Quake 3, Grid Wars, Tetris,
Minesweeper, or just plain thinking about how sharp you
are at the moment
How to Measure Brain Performance?
• Some possible tests that don’t have a big learning effect,
are reliable, and aren’t designed to bore you:
Psychomotor Vigilance Test, sightreading music,
Continuous Performance Tasks, typing speed tests,
Test of Variables of Attention, Sudoku, crosswords,
arithmetic, solitaire, blitz go, blitz chess, brain training
games, dual n-back, Quake 3, Grid Wars, Tetris,
Minesweeper, or just plain thinking about how sharp you
are at the moment
How to Measure Brain Performance?
• Some possible tests that don’t have a big learning effect,
are reliable, and aren’t designed to bore you:
Psychomotor Vigilance Test, sightreading music,
Continuous Performance Tasks, typing speed tests,
Test of Variables of Attention, Sudoku, crosswords,
arithmetic, solitaire, blitz go, blitz chess, brain training
games, dual n-back, Quake 3, Grid Wars, Tetris,
Minesweeper, or just plain thinking about how sharp you
are at the moment
• Really? Is that the best we can do?
Aha! SRS performance == brain performance!
• Already doing SRS every day
• 100,000 reviews this year
• 18,000 have energy data
• Correlations• Retention rate vs. energy:
• Thinking time vs. energy:
• Total review time vs. energy:
Aha! SRS performance == brain performance!
• Already doing SRS every day
• 100,000 reviews this year
• 18,000 have energy data
• Correlations• Retention rate vs. energy: 0.02
• Thinking time vs. energy: 0.03
• Total review time vs. energy: 0.02
This is a lot harder to measure than I thought
How to Measure Brain Performance?
• Seth Roberts’ arithmetic test
• …?
What about passive measuring?
• Devices that monitor your brain waves?
• Physical indicators correlated to mental function?
• Other biofeedback devices?
• This would be really awesome
Okay, Let’s Talk
• Spaced repetition for the win?
• How would you measure brain performance?
• What are your experiences tracking learning and cognition?
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniakhttp://blog.sethroberts.net/2010/03/27/why-i-use-arithmetic-to-measure-brain-function/http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/01/29/the-buttermind-experiment/http://blog.sethroberts.net/2010/11/19/effect-of-flaxseed-oil-on-arithmetic/http://lesswrong.com/lw/1gl/how_to_test_your_mental_performance_at_the_moment/http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2562632
