Comment by ix101
1 day ago
One way it could grade you automatically is by the speed of flipping the card (or entering the correct answer). If it took less than a second to confirm then evidently it was easy.
1 day ago
One way it could grade you automatically is by the speed of flipping the card (or entering the correct answer). If it took less than a second to confirm then evidently it was easy.
But conversely, if I alt-tabbed to chat with a friend, or paused studying because the person sitting next to me asked a question, or I took a sip from my coffee mug, that doesn't mean it's hard necessarily. Even though all of those take at least as much time as answering a hard card un-interrupted would.
The AI cannot read my mind, there is no approximation that will work reasonably accurately here for "how confident was I in my answer", unless I input that myself.
It should definitely be added as a variable within the calculation, but the current FSRS predicts how likely you are to access the memory (if it's sufficiently available which is defined by its retrieval strength) and speed of retrieval isn't really a factor in this version. The different grades are more to define how well all parts of the memory is retrieved.
Not to say that how quickly you can access it doesn't play a role in real life.
Whenever I try to use anki I can't figure what those four buttons actually mean, so I end up with 40 cards that I still can't recall and then the thing happily drops another 10 on top and I just delete the deck or the app. Haven't learned the thing I was trying to learn with it ever.
Either I don't understand the algorithm or it doesn't understand me.
The four buttons is apparently a contentious topic in the community. It's gotten more serious because in FSRS misusing "hard" to mean "I didn't get it, but I felt close" is really bad and throws off the algorithm.
I like the design suggestions proposed at [1] and [2] for this particular problem. [2] in particular gives tooltips which are supposed to guide you toward exactly what the buttons mean:
- Again: "My answer was completely incorrect"
- Hard: "My answer was correct, but I hesitated a lot"
- Good: "My answer was correct, and I hesitated a little"
- Easy: "My answer was correct, and I didn't hesitate"
That said, you can also just reduce it to a two-button system: only ever use Again and Good. There is some evidence this works better, especially with FSRS which is doing enough machine-learning behind the scenes anyway that it doesn't need the extra signal from Hard vs. Good vs. Easy.
[1]: https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/how-to-prevent-users-from-misus... [2]: https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/how-to-prevent-users-from-misus...
My tip is to map the 1-4 difficulties as "wrong, or <60% confidence", "60-80% confidence, thought required", "90%+ confidence, thought required", and "90%+ confidence, no serious thought".
Depending on what you're learning, you might vary those. For language learning, that works well imo.
Also, make sure to switch to FSRS. The old algorithm defaulted to "again" resetting a card to 0, while "again" in FSRS does show it again, but doesn't reset it back to being effectively new.
If you want to understand the algorithm, read this: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/ABC...
Maybe the manual will help you: https://docs.ankiweb.net/studying.html#answer-buttons