Comment by Muromec

2 days ago

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.

3 comments

Muromec

Reply
domenicd  16 hours ago

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...

TheDong  2 days ago

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...