nice job! particularly glad when you close/open tab it continues where you left off
I am your classic american who would embarrass themselves if publicly tested on this. Never done spaced repetition outside of index card analogs, and I like the idea
I'll have to click more to experience the `spaced repetition` bit, just getting an early comment in to cheers you
I am really enjoying this! I'll continue to use this for a while, and I really hope I'll learn more countries in the long term
Also, I absolutely love that it's so easy to start playing (no signup, no popups, etc)
Question: For the countries I know and select first time, I get them multiple times between countries. It's a bit odd to have to select England a couple of times, but the countries I don't know, I seem to get less often, or no repeats at all. Is this intended?
(edit) Question 2: Is there any scenario where you'd actually guess wrong more than once? After the first miss click, the country is highlighted. I don't see I'd ever get "You found country in 3 clicks".
I find it surprisingly effective how you have to get it closer when it zooms in and you have to do it with less context. There were a bunch of countries that I could point general on a map, but that I might mix up with a neighbour, e.g. Guyana and French Guyana. With this method, I got it on the first try, and each time it zoomed in I was able to remember more specifically.
Wow. This is really cool. After reading the headline, I was expecting to see it and think 'meh, why not just use Anki and the Ultimate Geography deck'.
I was wrong!
But the fact I get credit for knowing roughly where a country is, and then it zooms in, is a great idea. And well implemented.
I am going to try this for a bit and, if it works well, I'll ask my son (8yo) to consider adding it to his daily habits.
I can identify all mainland countries but have really hard time with the island nations in Oceania and the Caribbean. Would love to have an option to select which specific area I want to practice with.
Also for countries that I can identify with first click, I have to keep clicking until the cycle is complete. It make sense to zoom and ask to identify the countries again, but maybe stop after getting it right continuously ~3 times?
This is an absolutely excellent way to learn, I am surprised at just how effective it was. I'd love a "manual" mode that let me discard countries/mark them to stay in rotation.
This is a great idea, though I feel like if you guessed the country accurately the first time I would like it move on to another country. That or a button that lets me skip to new countries. I know where Australia and it's a bit tedious to be forced into spaced repetition for it three times.
very cool – it would be fun to load more detailed outlines at higher resolutions using map tiles or someing. at high zooms some of the shapes are quite blocky
What list did you use for the list of "countries"? (I only ask because the first one I got was Northern Cyprus which is only recognized by Turkey and not a UN state).
edit: I see the code is fetching from the following, which has 177 features:
This is so cool. I modified the script so that the countries are a bit darker (#777), and I found that it helped the borders pop a lot more. It would probably be equally interesting to play this game with no borders at all.
Not to scope creep, but it would be great if users could pick from 1 or 2 themes. Or maybe just refactor it so that changing a global var from the javascript would let you change the colors.
edit: also the collective north and south poles take up about 60% of the zoomed out map. I bet you could crop most of antarctica and a significant portion of the upper northern hemisphere without degrading the experience.
* I like how the map moves around. It helps nail down relationships to neighbors
* I don't mind a few extra "Where's canada", even though it's not that useful
* I'd like the pause between answers be shorter.
* Small countries are impossible to see when zoomed out on the first exposure, even when selected right. I find myself knowing the area it's in (ie, central america) but not which exact country. So selecting it right when zoomed out doesn't get me the correct answer.
This is awesome, I got way more sucked into this than I expected. If you're open to adding more features, a "custom playlist" would be really cool. I'd love to drill myself on the Balkans or West Africa, for instance.
– With remote islands somewhere in the oceans, the last zoom level isn't very effective since the map will essentially only show the island you're supposed to identify.
– The map's resolution could be higher.
– The challenge (top right) doesn't work for me in Firefox for Android. It always tells me I have guessed wrong (as if I had accidentally tapped somewhere on the map) when in reality I haven't even made a guess in the first place and was waiting for the game to tell me which country to identify.
This may seem odd but I don’t like knowing where countries are, it makes the world seem like a much larger more mysterious place. It’s cool to stumble across some country you never knew existed in some part of the world you barely thought about. Knowing where a country is in the world has little use these days, since transcending physical borders is pretty trivial. It’s mostly a useless fact or piece of trivia now.
I’d prefer if it did what Anki does — give me 10-20 new countries before cycling back to ones I’ve already done. Just switching back and forth between two countries I already know over and over again is pretty boring.
Although that's a decent UI and gamification with the circles and all, if I seriously wanted to memorize this information, I would just want the data as an Anki deck.
Front of card: country name, plus possibly: recognizably large segment of world map containing that country, without highlighting.
Back of card: same graphic, with that country colored.
Determining whether you got it right is self-evaluation in Anki; if you thought of the correct map shown in by the back of the card, you hit the good button, otherwise bad.
This clever paradigm in Anki means that deck authors don't have to develop UI for the user to specify correct answers.
Say you want to go from dog breed names like "Yorkshire terrier" to photographs (rather than photo to name). How would you develop a UI by which the machine could test you and confirm that you know? Probably multiple choice is all we have. Multiple choice with too few choices gives the answer away to some extent. Too many choices will overwhelm your mobile device screen. You could ask the use to draw the animal. That would be time consuming and require talent not directly related to memorizing dogs.
With self evaluation, you don't need it. You just imagine a Yorkshire terrier as best as you can. Then if you think the back of the card is close to what you were thinking off, you hit Good. If you imagined a Westie, or German Shepherd, so that you are surprised and dismayed by the unexpected Yorkie image, then you hit Bad.
- It'd be great to be able to move the map around, zoom in / out - staying in one place feels a bit restricting.
- For some smaller countries you can't actually see where they were once the ring is put over them
- Once a country has been identified it'd be handy to see their neighbouring countries to add some more context to where a country is.
- It'd also be nice to learn a bit more about a country (e.g. unique things about it) that may help further cement the idea of a country so that it's more than just a name on a map.
This is fun. I'd appreciate a way to select only certain continents/regions. At the very least let us mark a country as known. As it is there are too many reps when it's a country you already know.
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28 Comments
grimgrin
nice job! particularly glad when you close/open tab it continues where you left off
I am your classic american who would embarrass themselves if publicly tested on this. Never done spaced repetition outside of index card analogs, and I like the idea
I'll have to click more to experience the `spaced repetition` bit, just getting an early comment in to cheers you
vladde
I am really enjoying this! I'll continue to use this for a while, and I really hope I'll learn more countries in the long term
Also, I absolutely love that it's so easy to start playing (no signup, no popups, etc)
Question: For the countries I know and select first time, I get them multiple times between countries. It's a bit odd to have to select England a couple of times, but the countries I don't know, I seem to get less often, or no repeats at all. Is this intended?
(edit) Question 2: Is there any scenario where you'd actually guess wrong more than once? After the first miss click, the country is highlighted. I don't see I'd ever get "You found country in 3 clicks".
i_am_a_squirrel
As someone who uses Anki, and has also made a country learning game, this is soooooo smart! Great job! Thank you!
Graziano_M
I find it surprisingly effective how you have to get it closer when it zooms in and you have to do it with less context. There were a bunch of countries that I could point general on a map, but that I might mix up with a neighbour, e.g. Guyana and French Guyana. With this method, I got it on the first try, and each time it zoomed in I was able to remember more specifically.
rahimnathwani
Wow. This is really cool. After reading the headline, I was expecting to see it and think 'meh, why not just use Anki and the Ultimate Geography deck'.
I was wrong!
But the fact I get credit for knowing roughly where a country is, and then it zooms in, is a great idea. And well implemented.
I am going to try this for a bit and, if it works well, I'll ask my son (8yo) to consider adding it to his daily habits.
tiktaktow
This is fun!
I can identify all mainland countries but have really hard time with the island nations in Oceania and the Caribbean. Would love to have an option to select which specific area I want to practice with.
Also for countries that I can identify with first click, I have to keep clicking until the cycle is complete. It make sense to zoom and ask to identify the countries again, but maybe stop after getting it right continuously ~3 times?
scottmcf
This is an absolutely excellent way to learn, I am surprised at just how effective it was. I'd love a "manual" mode that let me discard countries/mark them to stay in rotation.
floodfx
Love this! Played Worldle (https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/) for a while and this would have been helpful.
Great application of spaced repetition beyond cards.
kelseydh
This is a great idea, though I feel like if you guessed the country accurately the first time I would like it move on to another country. That or a button that lets me skip to new countries. I know where Australia and it's a bit tedious to be forced into spaced repetition for it three times.
ananmays
very cool – it would be fun to load more detailed outlines at higher resolutions using map tiles or someing. at high zooms some of the shapes are quite blocky
ks2048
What list did you use for the list of "countries"? (I only ask because the first one I got was Northern Cyprus which is only recognized by Turkey and not a UN state).
edit: I see the code is fetching from the following, which has 177 features:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/holtzy/D3-graph-gallery/ma…
nebalee
Neat, but England is wrong. The area highlighted when clicking is the United Kingdom.
sciencesama
Dockerize it to easy selfhost !
jmole
This is so cool. I modified the script so that the countries are a bit darker (#777), and I found that it helped the borders pop a lot more. It would probably be equally interesting to play this game with no borders at all.
Not to scope creep, but it would be great if users could pick from 1 or 2 themes. Or maybe just refactor it so that changing a global var from the javascript would let you change the colors.
edit: also the collective north and south poles take up about 60% of the zoomed out map. I bet you could crop most of antarctica and a significant portion of the upper northern hemisphere without degrading the experience.
cschneid
A few thoughts after ~5 minutes:
* I like how the map moves around. It helps nail down relationships to neighbors
* I don't mind a few extra "Where's canada", even though it's not that useful
* I'd like the pause between answers be shorter.
* Small countries are impossible to see when zoomed out on the first exposure, even when selected right. I find myself knowing the area it's in (ie, central america) but not which exact country. So selecting it right when zoomed out doesn't get me the correct answer.
Graziano_M
There seems to be a bug with Fiji. It moves the map around, but never zooms in on it.
sdotdev
I like how the position of the map changes to center another place or zooms in to really make you think.
only slight thing is that i wish the map had more contrast, apart from that this is great
radicalcentrist
This is awesome, I got way more sucked into this than I expected. If you're open to adding more features, a "custom playlist" would be really cool. I'd love to drill myself on the Balkans or West Africa, for instance.
avvt4avaw
Some Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish people may take issue with your definition of "England"
codethief
Nice job!
A few observations & thoughts:
– With remote islands somewhere in the oceans, the last zoom level isn't very effective since the map will essentially only show the island you're supposed to identify.
– The map's resolution could be higher.
– The challenge (top right) doesn't work for me in Firefox for Android. It always tells me I have guessed wrong (as if I had accidentally tapped somewhere on the map) when in reality I haven't even made a guess in the first place and was waiting for the game to tell me which country to identify.
deadbabe
This may seem odd but I don’t like knowing where countries are, it makes the world seem like a much larger more mysterious place. It’s cool to stumble across some country you never knew existed in some part of the world you barely thought about. Knowing where a country is in the world has little use these days, since transcending physical borders is pretty trivial. It’s mostly a useless fact or piece of trivia now.
butshouldyou
Nice little game! One correction: Swaziland has been called Eswatini since 2018. Lots of websites still use the old name, unfortunately.
aquafox
I boosted my geography knowledge by playing Sporcle, e.g. https://www.sporcle.com/games/g/world
rafram
I’d prefer if it did what Anki does — give me 10-20 new countries before cycling back to ones I’ve already done. Just switching back and forth between two countries I already know over and over again is pretty boring.
Also, why is Antarctica on there?
kazinator
Although that's a decent UI and gamification with the circles and all, if I seriously wanted to memorize this information, I would just want the data as an Anki deck.
Front of card: country name, plus possibly: recognizably large segment of world map containing that country, without highlighting.
Back of card: same graphic, with that country colored.
Determining whether you got it right is self-evaluation in Anki; if you thought of the correct map shown in by the back of the card, you hit the good button, otherwise bad.
This clever paradigm in Anki means that deck authors don't have to develop UI for the user to specify correct answers.
Say you want to go from dog breed names like "Yorkshire terrier" to photographs (rather than photo to name). How would you develop a UI by which the machine could test you and confirm that you know? Probably multiple choice is all we have. Multiple choice with too few choices gives the answer away to some extent. Too many choices will overwhelm your mobile device screen. You could ask the use to draw the animal. That would be time consuming and require talent not directly related to memorizing dogs.
With self evaluation, you don't need it. You just imagine a Yorkshire terrier as best as you can. Then if you think the back of the card is close to what you were thinking off, you hit Good. If you imagined a Westie, or German Shepherd, so that you are surprised and dismayed by the unexpected Yorkie image, then you hit Bad.
straffs
This is something i'll make my kids play when they are older!
LouisSayers
Nice work! It's quite cool.
Feedback:
neither_color
This is fun. I'd appreciate a way to select only certain continents/regions. At the very least let us mark a country as known. As it is there are too many reps when it's a country you already know.