Forgetting to Remember

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve describes the way humans retain knowledge.

When we learn something for the first time, it stays fresh in our minds for a little while. For instance, if I tell you “the Japanese word for Dog is ‘Inu’ (犬)”, you should have no problem answering when I ask you about it in the next paragraph. Ready?

What’s the Japanese word for Dog?

“Inu”. Right. Easy.

Well, if I ask you again in a few paragraphs, you may well have forgotten it. This is what the Forgetting Curve describes: As time passes, your ability to recall a particular fact diminishes until, after a while, it’s forgotten.

This inescapable decline seems pretty dismal. Don’t worry, though! The fact that you’re able to read and understand this very sentence proves that learning is, in fact, possible. (In case you forgot)

Learning is, in a way, just a process of continually not forgetting things.

We learn and remember facts by refreshing our memory from time to time, before it completely fades away. Doing this enough times makes it stick in our minds, for good.

Dog? “Inu”. Great.

There’s an art to figuring out when to review something—when to “reset” the forgetting curve. Turns out, the optimal time to do this is just as you’re about to forget it. This is the premise of a technique called spaced rehearsal.

For nearly a century, psychologists and teachers alike have demonstrated the efficacy of spaced rehearsal in the lab and in the classroom. It’s the invisible thread that connects so much of how we learn today, from flash cards to Pimsleur.

But for all of its advantages, spaced rehearsal is difficult to do by yourself. Keeping track of what you need to learn next carries a cognitive load, which only increases as the number of things you are studying grows.

Luckily, this is a problem that can be solved by software. Let computers figure out what you need to study instead! That way, you can focus on actually learning.

That’s the foundation of Smart.fm: a tool to manage your “brain bank”, allowing you to learn faster and retain knowledge longer. We all want to be more intelligent, more sophisticated, more articulate. With Smart.fm, you can get there by studying less, and have fun while you’re at it.

Over the last 6 months of working at Smart.fm, I’ve become fascinated in the way technology can hack our brains, and how it has the potential to completely transform and democratize education. A cognitive revolution is underway, and being on the front lines has been an unbelievable experience.

Some really amazing things are on the way.

Out of curiosity, do you remember how to say “dog” in Japanese?