Quantified reading and spaced repetition

Hey guys.

For the past six months I’ve been working on an app to quantify my reading and support spaced repetition to make remembering what I’ve read insanely simple:

Here’s a screenshot of the reading progress tracking:

It also supports a feature called pagemarks to allow you to easily suspend and resume reading so you can jump back at any time.

I’m considering improving this functionality by gamifying the entire system and using your mobile device to prompt you to hit your reading goals if you’ve forgotten to read that day.

Would love your feedback.

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Thank you for posting this. I think reading and learning is severely under-resourced and I’m really glad to see this and try it. I made an account and took the door, and experimented with highlighting and flashcard creation. A few questions:

What spaced repetition approach are you using? Is it SM2?

For reading, I find this tools super useful: http://www.readsy.co/.

I learned about it from Kyrill Potapov: https://vimeo.com/152595582

Thanks… Right now we’re syncing directly with Anki, a 3rd party spaced repetition tool.

It uses SM2 but we’re also working on our own SM2 to make things easier for people that aren’t Anki users.

Anki is a bit more of a power tool so not really usable for novice users.

Kevin, are you familiar with SuperMemo’s incremental reading? There’s a couple ideas from there that could be great for Polar. Namely, a mode or a button that will bring up a random pdf. The user can then read for as long as their current interest holds, then randomize to the next article. It’s a great way of moving incrementally through an overwhelming number of PDFs.

If you implement your own flashcard mode, I suggest the option to review one’s highlights in a spaced repetition manner (without having to turn them into questions). There’s a service called readwise that let’s you do this with Kindle and Instapaper highlights, and I can see it being useful here. I have found this to be a powerful way to return to ideas and connect them to new ideas I’ve encountered. Unlike traditional question-based spaced repetition, the goal is not necessarily to keep ideas retrievable in your memory, but to see them mixed with other ideas, making it possible to make novel connections.

So why not just use SuperMemo? It doesn’t have support for pdf, so this would fill that whole (and be an incredible knowledge management system on its own).

Thanks for the incredible work so far.

Kevin, are you familiar with SuperMemo’s incremental reading? There’s a couple ideas from there that could be great for Polar. Namely, a mode or a button that will bring up a random pdf.

I am familiar… I have a different perspective on this. My background is machine learning , search, big data, etc.

I don’t think random in this situation is the best strategy.

I think it makes sense for the user to have a queue which is prioritized. Right now you can prioritize by tags, flagged, reading progress, etc.

I usually start with my flagged document and pick the one I’m most closest to finishing.

Or I have primary tags like ‘mathematics’ or ‘textbooks’ that are my key / important reading.

If you implement your own flashcard mode, I suggest the option to review one’s highlights in a spaced repetition manner (without having to turn them into questions). There’s a service called readwise that let’s you do this with Kindle and Instapaper highlights, and I can see it being useful here. I have found this to be a powerful way to return to ideas and connect them to new ideas I’ve encountered. Unlike traditional question-based spaced repetition, the goal is not necessarily to keep ideas retrievable in your memory, but to see them mixed with other ideas, making it possible to make novel connections.

Possibly… but I I think maybe for just review to turn them back into flashcards.

I believe strongly in the active recall hypothesis:

That the process of recall is what’s most important.

This is passive recall which is far less effective.

So why not just use SuperMemo? It doesn’t have support for pdf, so this would fill that whole (and be an incredible knowledge management system on its own).

Yes… SuperMemo is very very dated at this point. No offense implied to SuperMemo but there are more features/polish that are needed for an ideal system.

I still don’t think Polar is ideal but we’re working on it.

Thanks for the incredible work so far.