Optimising Anki Settings

[Johnny20270]

Hi all

I am just wondering what settings you guys/girls use for Anki reviews. I don't think my settings are optimal specifically

Leeches

I set the threshold to 99 and notify only, never suspend a card due to a leech. I understand the concept behind suspending a card but personally I prefer to bash through a stubborn card a 100 times if necessary to get it into my fat head.

New cards per day

5-10 is a max for me, just can't cope with any more or reviews become huge/time required enormous. (going through HSK 4)

Step sizes for new cards (in minutes)

I have default 1min and 10min. I think this is is not optimal for me, 10mins is too long and after 10mins, waiting until the next day is also too long. I would prefer 1m 5m 10m and 2 hours or something. It would increase the number of reviews but (a) less likely a card will be failed and (b) I don't spend ages iterating around a whole pile of failed cards. However it appears there is a lot of science behind the SRS. Also no option in ANKI (as far as I can see) for this graduating intervals

Starting Ease

I need this down at around 150% as I almost never select Good. Alternatively I set Interval Modifier this to 70%

Max reviews

1000, don't see the point of having anything less, just stop when you get bored

Interval Modifier

This, I am not sure about. The documentation shows its a exponential scale between retention rate and reviews. I think this is where I need to change it. I have it at 70%

*** Limit on failed cards ***

I thought there was a limit of number of failed cards before review or new cards were shown. Can't find this option now This is another problem for me. I an often have 20-30 failed cards and ANKI just introduces new (blue) or review cards (green) it just confuses the matter. Personally I would rather the failed cards be hammered through first until I get then right. Just did a review now I seem to be iterating around 20 of the same failed cards constantly

Thoughts?

[Johnny20270]

ahh, I'm wrong! Read the documentation carefully again and did a test on a new deck. You can do exactly what I said above you can have graduating steps such as 1min 5min 10mins and 2 hours etc. It all affects the GOOD button.

Why did I not notice this before?

Anyway, would be interesting to see other peoples settings

[tysond]

Personally I have found it's very inefficient to bash through cards the way you are talking about.

SRS is about retention, not learning. Learning comes from study - learn the word, practice it, visualize it, make a mnemonic about it, put it into sentences, listen to it in sentences, etc.

Before a card goes into my SRS I learn it. I study it, listen to it, say it, study each component of it, make a mnemonic etc. So I pretty much know it. When it comes up the first time I sometimes press "Easy - 4 days" because, hey, I already know it pretty well.

When I fail a card multiple times in a day, I stop doing reps (e.g. I switch over to Pleco or something). I look at it more carefully. I say the sentence or word or character a few times. I create/revise/review my mnemonic.

Or, if I don't want to do that and I just feel like bashing on, I suspend the card.

Or, if I don't take my own advice, and bash on, then the next card is also failed, I close the SRS and do something else. Or take a nap. Clearly I am tired and getting grumpy and need to stop.

This article (and others linked from it) explain in more detail this idea:

http://www.hackingchinese.com/if-you-think-spaced-repetition-software-is-a-panacea-you-are-wrong/

Hence, the only thing I change in my Anki settings are # of new cards a day (currently 60) and max # of reviews (currently 300).

[Guest realmayo]

I agree with tysond that it's good to learn a word and then use Anki normally to make sure you remember it.

So for words which are "learned", I don't muck around much with the regular Anki settings.

But I do use Anki to help me learn the words too: I change the learning intervals to require me to see the word quite a few times at this initial stage. I'll also try to do what tysond says about learning the word outside of Anki. I'm not that bothered if it's a simple noun which I'm not going to confuse with something else. But certainly something more conceptual needs a bit of "real world" training.

I used to feel the same was as you about leeches. Now I'm much more ruthless. But every so often I'll go through the suspended leeches, pick a few, and make a fresh effort to learn them in a different way.

You're wise to limit the number of new words per day.

Starting ease:

I don't think "starting ease" is for a brand new card, but for a learned one. If you're rarely selecting good even though the word has just passed into the learned bucket, I'd suggest you haven't learned it well enough -- or, that you're not confident enough to trust the algorithm.

Max reviews:

agree

Interval modifier:

I'd follow the manual in its advice not to play around with this unless you're sure that you're happy to increase the amount of time you spend on Anki for a modest trade-off in improved retention.

Clearly I am tired and getting grumpy and need to stop.

Good advice, I can get into loops where failing cards makes me grumpy which distracts me which makes me fail more cards than I otherwise should etc etc.

[Johnny20270]

thanks chaps,

fully agree about the need for understanding new words before you try to retain them. Its one of ANKI guiding principles. As you say realmayo, when memorising some words (Chinese to English or vice versa), especially nouns, I think there is no learning to be done, as the meaning is very clear, e.g. animals. I don't need to see a chinese sentence such as "I like that dog" and then "I like that giraffe" etc In this case its just a matter of belting it through in my view.

My issue is always Hanzi --> English meaning. Using my example of memorizing colors, If I am presented with the character for 'red' say, I just need to see it many times, perhaps make up my own dumb story for the Hanzi. It is for this reason I find the ANKI settings not optimal for me. Perhaps my retention curve is a lot different to others. 1m 10m and next day is not appropiate for me I think.

I did try my new approach today on my train journey into work and it was more encouraging (maybe not more effective, we shall see). In particular I am not frustrated as much by having so many failed cards and yet another new one pop up. And for me, thats the key point: not being boring to tears. I find learning Hanzi mind numbingly boring. However, I find grammar rules very interesting and I think for me, thats due to my whole background & education (PhD maths), so language learning is not ideal for me.

tysond: 60 per day, impressive! & thanks for the link, will read it now

And yes, the 'getting annoyed' factor is also key. If I start to get get fed up, I immediately fail teh card rather than focus for a few seconds. Thats the stage to quit for a while

[Johnny20270]

Incidently, one aspect I like Anki for is that I can summarise grammer points in the same system. I just use it purely as an organisational tool rathar than SRS. For example, examining "Verbs and Time expressions". A flash card like

I went to beijing yesterday

I will go to Bejing tomorrow

After I go to Beijing ....

i have been to Beijing

When I went to Beijing I ...

In three days time I will go to Beijing

or comparisions

A is better than B

A is much better than B

A is no better than B

A is not as good as B

A and B are the same

I find Anki great as a facility to summarise key grammer points in a neat flash card, as apposed to a grammer book where (a) a physical book is not ideal and (b) grammer points are el;borated on too much or dotted about the chapter. The SRS functionaly is not necessary

[PBolchover]

For the interval modifier, my recommendation is that every few months, you check at the "Pass percentage" for "young" card in the previous month. If this is significantly different that what you aim for (e.g. 90%), then adjust the interval modifier to match.

I personally have different interval modifiers for different types of cards (e.g. Sentences / Vocabulary / Characters), and have found that this is an excellent way to reduce the daily load (obviously at the expense of slightly reducing retention)

[Guest realmayo]

My issue is always Hanzi --> English meaning. Using my example of memorizing colors, If I am presented with the character for 'red' say, I just need to see it many times, perhaps make up my own dumb story for the Hanzi.

When I was learning the characters, I was learning English -> Hanzi as well as Hanzi -> English. I used mnemonics based on what I think is an excellent book, here. I'd look up the character in Wenlin, find the component parts, learn those too if necessary, then look at the most common two or three words which used this character, and ideally add those words to Anki too, then find an example sentence or too. All those details would go in an extra field visible once I'd answered the card: the mnemonic, component parts, words using this character, and example sentences. I think the process of creating these cards took me a big way towards learning the thing before I was even shown the card in Anki.

These days for new C->E words my settings are something like 10 mins, 20 mins, 2 hours, 24 hours, I can't remember exactly.