The "forgetting curve" is an experimental finding.
I'm lazy, so here's Wikipedia's explanation:
"The
forgetting curve illustrates the decline of memory retention in time. A related concept is the
strength of memory that refers to the durability that
memory traces in the
brain. The stronger the memory, the longer period of time that a person is able to recall it. A typical
graph of the forgetting
curve shows that humans tend to halve their memory of newly learned knowledge in a matter of days or weeks unless they consciously review the learned material.
In 1885,
Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered the
exponential nature of
forgetting. The following formula can roughly describe the forgetting:
where
R is memory retention,
S is the relative strength of memory, and
t is
time.
The first significant study in this area was carried out by
Hermann Ebbinghaus and published in 1885 as
Über das Gedächtnis (later translated into English as
Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology). Ebbinghaus studied the memorisation of nonsense syllables, such as "WID" and "ZOF". By repeatedly testing himself after various time periods and recording the results, he was the first to describe the shape of the forgetting curve."
Read more yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve
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If memory retention can be modeled by R, then it is indeed possible to program a software that can predict when you are 90% likely to remember something (i.e. 10% likely to forget it).
Everyone should take a few psych courses, imo. Highly useful! Also, there are many psychological principles/findings from experimental psychology that are at first quite counter-intuitive, but quite useful to know.
)? The second thing it assumes is that we live in some sort of a vacuum where everything goes according to plan. There's going to be tons of times where I'm not going to be able to follow it's path as I would like to.
