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From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>
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Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 00:04:52 -0400
Subject: Re: OT - programming logflash Re: [lojban] Logflash
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At 07:10 PM 05/08/2000 -0400, Brook Conner wrote:
> >From an engineering standpoint, a flash-card vocabulary drilling program
>has several different components. Some of these are best left to
>existing libraries (because they've been done and aren't specific to the
>task at hand - displaying text and inputting it, for example). Others
>are more specific, such as generating random permutations of the
>vocabulary lists and tracking performance on the vocabulary. Logflash
>puts the vocab into "piles" based on how well the user is doing on that
>word. Deciding when to move vocabulary from pile to pile is an
>interesting part of the problem.

Note that for LogFlash, the algorithm for the above was precisely the one 
developed over several years by JCB and his first wife with hardcopy flash 
cards specifically for learning Loglan gismu.  Apparently this was the 
optimal algorithm among many variations tested, though as usual he never 
documented what the testing and option alternatives that were found inferior.

The ultimate test is in the results.  People have found LogFlash boring or 
frustrating, but so far as I know, no one who has completed the program has 
had cause to complain that they hadn't thoroughly learned the words.

Indeed almost 20 years after she wrote the first version of LogFlash on a 
TRS-80 in BASIC, and 12 years after completely relearning the Lojban 
vocabulary, but rarely practicing Lojban, Nora is now brushing up with 
LogFlash and scoring 90% plus, and her worst problems seem to be 
occasionally false memory links to the Loglan words she learned with 
LogFlash before we redeveloped the Lojban vocabulary.

There were many suggestions for alterations to the algorithm, and the 
current LogFlash option screen allows several of the easier to implement 
ones.  Yet even today, I make the same recommendation I followed in 1987 
and 1988, use Gaining Control Mode, and the largest New Word Pile size you 
can stand, preferably one that gives between 15 and 25 error words per new 
word lesson, and do it daily without fail (this will typically take about 
an hour a day).  In a month you'll finish the first pass through the 
words.  Within 3 months or so, increasing your lesson size when your error 
rate goes down, you'll get 97% or better on the words (in my case doing 500 
words in a half hour test).

lojbab
----
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                    703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:  http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)


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