Blank Slate’s algorithm: Backed by peer-reviewed science
If you’ve used Blank Slate, you’ve experienced how efficiently it helps you retain knowledge. Because Blank Slate has a unique algorithm that tracks your personal rate of forgetting, it only reminds you to review information that you’re likely to forget and it doesn’t bother you with information that you already know well. That’s why Blank Slate users can retain vast amounts of knowledge for only a minute or two of engagement each day.
In a study from the Quinnipiac University School of Medicine in 2021, researchers compared the efficacy of Blank Slate’s algorithm against conventional strategies for knowledge retention.
In the study, 93 young adults watched a lecture about the Republic of Georgia and then took an immediate quiz. They then spent four weeks in one of three groups:
- Blank Slate Group: 37 participants used Blank Slate to study 60 facts about Georgia every day
- Traditional Study Group: 37 participants simply studied all 60 facts about Georgia every day
- Control Group: 19 participants had no access to the facts about Georgia.
After the four-week period, participants completed the same quiz as before.
As the bar graph shows, using Blank Slate was just as effective for knowledge retention as traditional studying and far more effective than not studying at all during the four-week period.
Even more impressive is the time required of participants to retain knowledge at ceiling levels: the Traditional Study Group spent an average of 3.4 minutes studying per day whereas the Blank Slate group spent an average of 1.2 minutes studying per day.
In other words, Blank Slate helped participants retain the same amount of knowledge for about one third of the time.
Learning and retaining knowledge is effortful, especially if you lead a busy life and need to be as efficient as possible with your studying. As our first research study shows, Blank Slate is here to solve the problem of forgetting in the least invasive way possible.
References:
McHugh, D., Feinn, R., McIlvenna, J., & Trevithick, M. (2021). A random controlled trial to examine the efficacy of blank slate: A novel spaced retrieval tool with real-time learning analytics. Education Sciences, 11(3), 90. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11030090
