Nate Meyvis

Common errors in flashcard composition

Here are some common errors I see in flashcard composition:

  1. Putting too much information in the answer field. This makes it difficult to tell whether you're right or wrong. If you need to produce many different pieces of information, it's usually best to make several flashcards. (It's fine to have additional information pop up with the answer, as long as this isn't a necessary part of the answer.)

  2. Putting too much information in the question field. This makes it too easy to "overfit" to it; your mind will likely seize on some distinctive piece of it. In the worst case, this will be a mere artifact of presentation, and you won't be likely to remember the relevant underlying fact when it occurs "in the wild."

  3. Trying too hard to be accurate. This might sound strange, but 100% accuracy is not always the goal. Again, overfitting is an enemy. A "basically right" prompt that looks more generic except for the essential information is often more effective than a prompt that rules out all edge cases and tricky alternative answers. So, for example, I have a flashcard in which the prompt is something like "sheep's-milk blue cheese." There are certainly others, but the thing I'm trying to remember is Roquefort. Any more detail would make it much easier for my memory to fixate on that detail. Consequently, it would be harder for me to get the right answer the next time I think "oh, what's that sheep's milk blue cheese?" Don't do this if you're studying for a test about cheese, of course!

  4. Copying and pasting from a textbook or Web page. Again, these cards make it too easy for the learner to fixate on accidents of phrasing. (They also tend to have too much information in the prompt, the answer, or both.)

  5. Not using an image when one is available or could be retrieved.

There are many other errors in flashcard creation, but most of them have to do with which cards and sets of cards you make in the first place, not the card-level composition after you decide to make a given card. Those errors deserve a different post.