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Interesting. I was never really happy with any spaced repetition algorithm, so I recently implemented my own dumb system which simply asks you for the number of days after which the card shall be shown again: https://github.com/kldtz/vmn

Usually my intuition about how well I know something is not too far off. If you don't specify anything, it doubles the time since the last review.


I had a similar problem where I can't remember the answer to the card, but after revealing it, it seemed too easy to make it due in a few days, so I would lie to the program and press Hard/Good. Later I removed scheduling times on top of buttons and decided to trust the algorithm. I believe it helped me to stop caring about schedule times and loosing progress on a certain card. After all, these algorithms were made for ordinary people with ordinary memory behavior.


I think my problem is that I'm not using the system as intended. I learn new vocabulary mainly by reading texts or watching videos in the target language and use spaced repetition to keep track of my progress. If I can't remember a word (as indicated by SR), I'll reread the text/rewatch the video where I've first encountered it. I don't want to keep reviewing the same word in my spaced repetition program, especially not in the same session.


Yes, you can write Python code that runs with missing or wrong type hints. Not ideal, but you can add a static type checker (mypy) as a step in your CI pipeline and reject commits that fail this step. Not much discipline required.


Seems like a lot of effort went into typesetting this, wow!

I can recommend "Calculus: Basic Concepts for High Schools" by the same author (L.V. Tarasov) to anybody unfamiliar with calculus: https://archive.org/details/TarasovCalculus/page/n1/mode/2up. It's written as a dialogue between author and reader.


Thanks for linking Calculus book.

His book on school physics also use the dialogue approach:

Questions and Answers in School Physics (Dialogues between students and teacher)

https://archive.org/details/questions-and-answers-in-school-...

While other two books use dialogues intermittently as in the probability book

Basics Concepts of Quantum Mechanics

https://archive.org/details/tarasov-basic-concepts-of-quantu...

This Amazingly Symmetrical World

https://archive.org/details/TarasovThisAmazinglySymmetricalW...

(I am the curator/maintainer of the mirtitles.org blog and the typesetter of the books)



This seems to have the hallmarks of LaTeX, meaning: not as much time sunk into "typesetting" as you might think ;)


It's not polite to accuse people of not reading the article, but

> This completely digital version typeset in using TEX with EB Garamond font by DAMITR MAZANAV [email protected]

> Released on the web by http://mirtitles.org in 2023.

> Access the BTEX project files http://gitlab.com/mirtitles/twibop


Needs LuaTeX to create. I look forward to learning some TeX typesetting tricks from this.


Learning calculus in high school made me question everything. You can never measure anything, never mind the area of a circe using calculus. It will only ever be a "good enough" measurement.

There is a point where all of you will finally come to appreciate the limits of rationalism and materialism and let go a bit more.


You seem to have misunderstood the essence of calculus. Calculus provides efficient, high quality estimates for messy real world phenomena.

Calculus put a man on the moon and a camera next to Pluto.


> Calculus provides efficient, high quality estimates for messy real world phenomena.

Can it love?

> Calculus put a man on the moon and a camera next to Pluto.

I am not saying the illusion is not useful, but all the things that come out of it are also inside the illusion.

What if Pluto is not as far away as we actually think it is?


Generally we think things are far away when it takes a longer time to get to them. We have some reasonable assurance that the speed of light is immutable and so we can measure the distance in our frame of reference by bouncing light off of Pluto. Are you nerd sniping sir?


I am making the distinction of what we perceive to be reality to actual reality.

Distance is a human concept. The moment we stop thinking distance does not exist. It may be a limitation that we perceive distance as something to be overcome through rocket ships and not through other methods.

Time is also in the same category. If you want to read a good book on the topic read “the end of Time quote by Jason Barbour.


> What if Pluto is not as far away as we actually think it is?

What if, what if.. um.. nothing, really? Our ships continue to work for a while, (may be t=0), then they won't, and we correct the models or the math.


You have moved deeply out of the realm of the scientific, into pure imagination. What if squiglal butterplotz mishric?


It’s an imagination where new discoveries are found.

The idea of distance being a human construct is not a new idea and may be the underpinnings of spooky action at a distance.


Then once you imagine it and write it down in a testable prediction, get back to is. Before then you have no means of getting us here to there.


I have thought it was interesting that, Christians believe, God became human and of all the things in the universe he could choose to teach about, apparently more than anything it is all about love (of a particular kind, actually).


I think OP understands that calculus is an enormously powerful tool.

I think the OP's point is that much like the Newtonian physics that paired with calculus to put a man on the moon, calculus is a pragmatically magnificent tool that doesn't yield exactly correct or perfectly accurate answers for many questions. Just "enough accuracy for the problem you're solving," in some very real senses.


Huh, what are we talking about here? Calculus does give exact results. What questions are we talking about? Fundamentally statistical questions are going to have inherent uncertainties, its got nothing to do with Calculus.


Calculus make use of the fundamental notions of convergence of infinite sequences and infinite series to a well-defined limit.

What you are calling an exact result is only a limit function. All “things” will measure infinitely.


Still not understanding what your issue is with calculus. I think so far you only have a problem with its outcomes when you feed it garbage. We expect to see "Calculus" diverge when integrating near the lattice spacing. I don't think we wholly disagree but I am doubtful you are going to make headway fighting against calculus.


I don’t have a problem with calculus, I’m just expressing its limitations. Using calculus to know the area of a circle is useful but it never really measures the area of a circle because the area of any circle is infinite.


It is not really about measuring things, but about reaching a definitive answer given some assumptions. Sometimes our notation of numbers get in the way of writing things shortly (instead of infinite decimal places), other times we can use a fraction and be exact on the paper we write on.


If you can infinitely divide a ruler, you can measure nothing.

we only stop because it’s convenient to stop. But that doesn’t make the size of anything have any specific size other than where we stop measuring it.


I would say calculus is about solving things exactly using infinitesimals and limits. There's also plenty of equations that can only be solved numerically.

What you're saying is in the practical real world we can never measure things exactly. That's true but that's not what I got from calculus. Irrational numbers come to mind (not calculus).

I come to almost the opposite conclusion as you. It is amazing that we can solve equations in spite of infinities.


Just some test feedback: On my phone I have to scroll horizontally to read the text on the website. A part is always cut off. (Same problem on the linked example sites.)


Are you on Android or iPhone?

Which model?

Which browser?

I assume you are using the phone in portrait mode.

This seems like an actual bug and I would like to try to reproduce it if possible.

If you're willing you can email me at [email protected]_m


The author gets the whole system backwards. Medicine is the most expensive thing you can study at a German university (~30K € per student per year). That's why the number of slots is very limited. Now the demand is higher than this limited number of slots, so universities need some criterion to reject applicants. The criterion happens to be mainly the GPA.

But I agree that the situation is suboptimal. Ideally, there should be more available slots. If we had too many physicians, we could pay them less and the demand would drop.


You sound like the banker in "The Bet" by Chekhov. I hope nobody makes a bet in this thread. :D


Thanks for the feedback! I agree, manipulating the social environment sounds evil and may lead down a dangerous path.

I was mainly thinking about what Skinner describes as bringing "the individual under the control of some remote consequences of his behavior". For example, the prospect of ultimately bringing about the extinction of humanity in a few hundred years is too remote to have an effect on anybody's decisions. It would be good to have a system that mediates the effect. I guess, "internalisation of external costs" sounds less threatening.


I can't read the whole article because it's behind a paywall. From what I see, it's about the inaccessibility of primary data from mRNA-vaccine trials by Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna. Possibly related English source: https://ebm.bmj.com/content/27/4/199


Thanks, I got hit by a paywall too.


It's a charming idea, kind of whimsical. I like that. But the screen really seems too small, even for writing. I recently bought a used ThinkPad X220 for 180€ (typing on it right now). OK, the battery won't last 100 hours, but I'd take it any day over this.


I agree. It also seems wildly inefficient to ask every student to read all those originals instead of systematic modern introductions. History is accumulating, so this becomes an impossible task at some point. If the ideas expressed in a text cannot be separated from their "original presentation", maybe they aren't that good after all. Exactly what I had in mind when I wrote this recently: https://verzettelung.com/22/09/10/


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