blog post - Andy's post about writing SRS prompts
lenses from Andy Matuschak's blog post - Andy's post about writing SRS prompts

Context-prefix: srs-prompts

sr:: ny427qc0am: Why the name "prompts"? || It captures more than just "a question", since the front of a card can also be a task. ::rs

Retrieval practice prompts should be effortful. It's important that the prompt actually involves retrieving the answer from memory. You shouldn't be able to trivially infer the answer. Cues are helpful, as we'll discuss later—just don't "give the answer away." In fact, effort appears to be an important factor in the effects of retrieval practice. That's one motivation for spacing reviews out over time: if it's too easy to recall the answer, retrieval practice has little effect. ^{^effortful}

lens are like blog post - six thinking hats ^{^d7641d}

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In blog post - Andy's post about writing SRS prompts he's talking about chicken stock.

lens -- attributes and tendencies

What makes stock, stock? What's always, sometimes, and never true of stock?

lens -- similarities and differences

Knowing what stock is requires knowing what relates and distinguishes it from other adjacent concepts.

lens -- parts and wholes

What are some examples of stocks? Are there important "sub-concepts" of stocks? Is "stock" a part of some broader category? Visualize a Venn diagram, even if the edges are fuzzy.

lens -- causes and effects

What does stock do? What causes it to do that? What doesn't it do? When is it used?

lens -- significance and implications

Why does stock matter? What does it suggest? Make the concept personally meaningful.

Prompt-writing can helpfully reveal such gaps in our understanding. You don't need to stick with one resource: follow your nose; Google around; consult other references. Even if you don't decide to follow up on the missing information immediately, you can guide future exploration by sensitizing yourself to feelings of curiosity and gaps in understanding.

knowledge gap | prompt writing ^{^writing-reveals-gaps}

Instead, it will reinforce whatever knowledge you consistently use when generating an answer. Your novel responses may also make meaningful associations which strengthen your memory through elaborative encoding. And those associations may be particularly sticky because of See Slamecka and Graf, The Generation Effect: Delineation of a Phenomenon (1978). another memory phenomenon called the generation effect: you remember information better when you generated it yourself.

encoding | elaborative encoding | generative activity

Many of the Orbit prompts in this guide are of this kind. They're meant to keep you in contact with these ideas until you can make sense of them as you write your own prompts. Odd as it may seem, I often write such prompts about my own ideas in the course of my creative work. They help me muse on an inkling or question over weeks and months, until it can hopefully grow into something more. This is one way prompt-writing can create understanding which extends beyond simply capturing knowledge from a text.

this almost seems like a way of keeping more open problems top of mind... open problems. I think that surfing your knowledge graph re-exposes you to open problems, but perhaps that is more haphazard and less reliable.

Those issues aside, it's hard to write good prompts on your first exposure to new ideas. You're still developing a sense of which details are important and which are not—both objectively, and to you personally. You likely don't know which elements will be particularly challenging to remember (and hence worth extra reinforcement). You may not understand the ideas well enough to write prompts which access their "essence", or which capture subtle implications. And you may need to live with new ideas for a while before you can write prompts which connect them vibrantly with whatever really matters to you.

But it's also important to notice if you feel yourself becoming restless. There's no deep virtue in writing a prompt about every detail. In fact, it's much more important to remain responsive to your sense of curiosity and interest.

References blog-post-rules-for-designing-precise-anki-cards

The SRS questions

The five lenses for writing conceptual prompts: attributes and tendencies, similarities and differences, parts and wholes, causes and effects, significance and implications.

conceptual prompts | lenses ^{^the-five-lenses}

properties of effective prompts: focused, precise, consistent, tractable, effortful ^{^properties}

The difference between this routine retrieval process and normal testing is its purpose is to produce learning, not assess it.

Think an example of a prompt that is more of a task than a question. Here is one from there questions the SRS questions.

"Create an explanation prompt for this factual prompt: Q. What's the textural impact of chicken stock? A. Creates a luxurious texture."

You can often reinforce and add meaning to factual prompts by adding prompts about why that fact is true. ^{^why-is-this-true}

Where should you add mnemonic devices to a prompt? ^{^ensure-that-not-required-part-is-clear} To the answer (use parentheses or indicate that it's not a "required" part of the answer)

Such cues engage another memory phenomenon cognitive scientists have explored experimentally: you make information easier to recall when you connect it to other memories. This process is called elaborative encoding See e.g. Bradshaw and Anderson, paper - elaborative encoding (1982).. The members of an ingredient list can be difficult to relate to anything meaningful. In such cases, you can still leverage elaborative encoding by fabricating an association as a mnemonic device. Vivid associations work best, so it’s helpful to find relationships involving visuals, meaningful personal experiences, or emotions like humor and disgust.

vivid associations work best is like facts are memorable when they have many visceral associations

How might you make a mnemonic device feel vivid? (name at least two ways) e.g. visuals, personal experiences, humor, disgust ^{^making-it-vivid}

blog post - Andy's post about writing SRS promptslenses from Andy Matuschak's blog post - Andy's post about writing SRS prompts

The SRS questions

blog post - Andy's post about writing SRS prompts
lenses from Andy Matuschak's blog post - Andy's post about writing SRS prompts