Myth: SuperMemo is a great tool for cramming

Myth

SuperMemo is a great tool for cramming. Many first-time users hear it by word of mouth that SuperMemo is a great tool for cramming. They are ready to buy the program only for the purpose of an exam coming in a week.

Fact

SuperMemo is nearly useless for cramming knowledge that is supposed to last less than a week. If you have all your knowledge stored in a computer file (e.g. HTML), cramming is possible with subset review. For children, all forms of asemantic learning require cramming (see: SuperMemo does not work for kids). Only semantic knowledge makes sense in SuperMemo used by children. For fast cramming for an exam, use traditional review, recall, repeat approach known to crammers for ages. The power of SuperMemo increases in proportion to the expected lifetime of knowledge in your memory. SuperMemo is useful if you need to remember things for a year (e.g. legal code). It is more useful if you learn for a decade (e.g. a programming language). But it is unsurpassed in gathering lifetime knowledge (e.g. anatomy, geography, history, etc.)

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