Convert R Markdown Documents into Anki Flashcards

A Quick Introduction

r2anki: Effectively Learn R through Spaced Repetition (Lightningtalk useR!2017)

Effectively Learn R through Spaced Repetition

The r2anki-package offers a streamlined approach to bring notes from your favourite programming language (written in R Markdown) to Anki, a software for spaced repitition learning.

When you learn and use R you need to memorize important commands to solve programming tasks effectively. Unfortunately some less frequently used function calls can be forgot easily as you learn more about the language.

Spaced repetition learning offers a solution to this problem by exposing you only to learning content, that you are about to forget. The r2anki-package can be used to easily convert R Markdown-scripts into a set of Anki-flashcards, that can be shared among the commmunity.

Install the r2anki-package and Anki

devtools::install_github("henningsway/r2anki")

Manual installation of Anki for now. Assisted by

r2anki::install_anki()

Prepare Anki for Use with r2anki-Package

First add a "r2anki"-example card to anki, via import the "anki/r2anki_cardtype.apkg"-file. This will make the "r2anki"-note-type available in Anki, which then is used to render R Markdown output correctly in Anki. Please call:

r2anki::r2anki(init = TRUE)

(When importing *.tsv-files into Anki later, make sure you check the "Allow HTML in fields" box. Also select (Note) Type "r2anki" for a nice markup.)

Possible Workaroundd: Should there be any problems related to the initialization (due to some recent changes), please import the r2anki.apkg-file manually into Anki. (Ctrl + I opens the shortcut) Link to r2anki.apkg

Create Anki Cards (and what to look out for)

You may freely use R Markdown while creating your Anki-cards. A few tags define aspects of the r2anki-cards and should be used with care (otherwise the parser will be confused). These are:

There are

• #### [required] precedes the title of your Anki-card (should be unique across your collection)
• <!-- start backside --> [required] defines the start of the answer.
• <!-- end backside --> [required] defines the start of the answer.

` The (outcommented) line `` is the place, where you can define some tags for your Anki-cards. These will then be added to all Anki-cards, which are described in this notebook. Multiple words per tag are allowed. Seperate individual tags per `,`. --> ` allows to define tags on the card-level. Seperate by `,`. -->

Feel free to try the addin(Tools > Addins > Insert r2anki-flashcard), when noting down a new card.

An r2anki-R-Markdown-template was installed with this package. Create a new Rmd-file, choose r2anki-flashcard-template and save the file to your preferred location.

Exporting your r2anki-cards to Anki

To transform your r2anki-notebook into Anki-cards, please save this document (ideally in your current working directory) and call

r2anki::r2anki("r2anki_file.Rmd")