> It seems hard to apply spaced repetition to numeric information or names of people you've just met at a party.
Spaced repetition is one of the only ways to learn names in my experience. If I learn someone’s name and then don’t see them again for 2 weeks, chances are I will have forgotten. Even if I see them once a month for a year, there’s a good chance I will forget each time.
If I see them the next day after I learned their name I will remember. If I see them a week after that I will still remember. If I see them a month after that chances are I will still remember.
If I had first e.g. read the person’s academic paper or a few of their blog posts or the like, there’s a good chance putting a face to the name once will be sufficient.
* * *
If you can get a photo of the person, then you can work learning their name into some kind of deliberate flash card routine, and that will be more effective overall than relying on chance encounters and less embarrassing than repeatedly asking.
I would recommend that teachers of lecture courses put a few minutes a day into doing spaced repetition of students’ faces/names, starting before the start of the term: teachers who can remember students’ names make a big impression.
Spaced repetition is one of the only ways to learn names in my experience. If I learn someone’s name and then don’t see them again for 2 weeks, chances are I will have forgotten. Even if I see them once a month for a year, there’s a good chance I will forget each time.
If I see them the next day after I learned their name I will remember. If I see them a week after that I will still remember. If I see them a month after that chances are I will still remember.
If I had first e.g. read the person’s academic paper or a few of their blog posts or the like, there’s a good chance putting a face to the name once will be sufficient.
* * *
If you can get a photo of the person, then you can work learning their name into some kind of deliberate flash card routine, and that will be more effective overall than relying on chance encounters and less embarrassing than repeatedly asking.
I would recommend that teachers of lecture courses put a few minutes a day into doing spaced repetition of students’ faces/names, starting before the start of the term: teachers who can remember students’ names make a big impression.