Change desired retention rate : reschedule cards on change

Anki Help
1

hello everyone,

I’m considering changing my desired retention rate for all the languages I’m learning from 0.9 to 0.88 to lighten the daily workload and because my true retention rate is 91% (although it differs a bit between languages) and the minimum recommended retention is 0.88.

I played around with the settings to preview how much the desired retention rate affects future reviews. here are the results :

desired retention of 0.9 (as it is today)
average number of reviews per day for the next month : 184
average number of reviews per day for the next 3 months : 124
average number of reviews per day for this year : 57
total reviews (for this year and beyond -all-) : 23302
daily workload : 233

desired retention of 0.95
reviews/day 1 month : 114
reviews/day 3 months : 76
reviews/day 1 year : 35
total reviews : 13022
daily workload : 759

desired retention of 0.88
reviews/day 1 month : 78
reviews/day 3 months : 51
reviews/day 1 year : 38
total reviews : 20907
daily workload : 279

desired retention of 0.85
reviews/day 1 month : 82
reviews/day 3 months : 45
reviews/day 1 year : 31
total reviews : 21919
daily workload : 211

desired retention of 0.8
av reviews/day 1 month : 69
av reviews/day 3 months : 44
av reviews/day 1 year : 24
total reviews : 22837
daily workload : 144

here is what I don’t understand :

1/ why is the daily load higher when I go from 0.9 to 0.88 retention rate ? shouldn’t it be the opposite ?

2/ why is the total number of reviews changing ?

3/ the graphs today are very consistent (in terms of how many reviews a day) and changing the settings disrupts them a lot. what is the reason for that ?

4/ why do I need to review a lot of words today ? up to 10000 with the 0.95 setting. I guess the graphs will look smoother and everything will come into place again after these reviews are done but I don’t understand the rationale for this.

(I presume questions 2, 3, and 4 are connected)

ultimately, my question is : should I reschedule cards on change or only lower the desired retention rate and wait until it really seriously affects my daily work load ?

this reschedule cards on change option seems very disrupting and not necessarily totally logical, hence maybe not that good.

thank you !

2

I need to ask where did you get the numbers from and whether you did a reschedule before checking the stats (if you were looking at the stats screen)?

It’s totally fine not too. I personally don’t touch it most of the times as it also clutters the card info.

1 Like
3

I changed the desired retention rate, rescheduled the cards, looked at the stats and wrote down the results. then I undid and I started the whole procedure again with a new desired retention rate.

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4

@L.M.Sherlock

5

Did you include the backlog?

6

no I didn’t.

7

FYI the daily load is working as expected.

If you have a backlog, including or not including it can affect the average reviews. It’s a little unpredictable. Sometimes, including backlog may increase the average and sometimes it can decrease.

8

what I wanted to do is to get an idea of how changing the desired retention rate would affect the daily number of reviews. what I did doesn’t give me a very clear idea. I read that even a 0.1 makes a difference which is cool as my minimum recommended retention rate is 0.88 and my true retention rate is pretty above 90%.

I also think that it’s a better idea to focus more on each card instead of cramming too many cards and guessing wrong because I’m getting tired and I’m not concentrated enough.

BUT
if I reschedule the cards, I will have to deal with a lot of reviews today -that is the backlog, am I correct ?- which is a big NO for me (and I don’t see the point of that. it’s just a waste of time in my opinion).
if I don’t reschedule the cards, it will take months (I started to use Anki about a year ago) before the new desired retention rate really affects my workload.

so what do you think I should do ?

9

so why is the workload increasing when I go from 0.9 desired retention rate to 0.88 ?
shouldn’t it be the opposite ?

10

That’s probably because you rescheduled and cards got their schedule corrected.

Can you check by changing the the desired retention back to 90 and doing a reschedule? I want to see if that increases your daily load.

1 Like
11

no, the number goes back to what it was.

12

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