Flashcards

I have written before of my love for flashcards. Last semester, in JW I found a tax flashcard soulmate, with whom to study cards and to speak fondly of the cards we had studied. I was upset to discover that Law in a Flash for Corporate Tax does not exist.

Over spring break I tried making my own cards, one per Code section, but they turned into large sheets of paper with notes scribbled all over them.

I went looking for some flashcard information online and found several freeware programs where you can make your own electronic cards. Anki and Mnemnosyne looked like the most promising, although both seem heavily targeted toward language learners. This discussion of flashcard programs is useful too. And I found a site where electronic flashcard devotees can share their cards.

Ultimately I decided that I should stick to paper. I realized that as fun as all this sounded, typing in all the information would be bad for my wrists and sitting in front of a computer while studying would be bad for my attention span.

In the course of my research, I did come across some flashcard theories. First, everyone talks about "spaced repetition," the idea that you remember better if you review frequently with longer and longer spaces in between review sessions. I didn't find a lot of specifics about how long those spaces should be, except for this random blog which says 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, and 3 weeks. The guy who did the most research on this was a German scientist named Sebastian Leitner, who in the 70s came up with a system where you have three piles of cards. When you get an answer right, you move it up a pile. When you get it wrong, you move it down a pile. You review the "wrong" pile most often and the "right" pile least often (and, naturally, the medium pile medium often). Sounds simple enough, and useful.