Display order with Learning Cards

Hello everyone.

Is there a way to have the cards in Learning presented to me in Ascending Order or Order gathered?

I don’t see this option? In fact I don’t see an option to create an order in Learning at all. Or have I missed something?

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If you mean – the first time the card is introduced as New and enters the Learn stage? Yes. In AnkiMobile, your “Deck Options” can be found in Study Tools > Study Options. All of the same functionality is available there as on Anki Desktop – including New card gather and sort order.

If you mean – after being introduced while a card remains in the Learn stage? No. It’s best that cards are not shown repeatedly in the same order. Once a card is introduced, it follows its own schedule, and Fuzz Factor helps keep the cards from falling into a sequence.

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That’s what I mean.

I understand. But let me explain to you why I think a choice would be useful at this point.

There are learning topics where the fuzz factor seems to make perfect sense to me. Vocabulary is a great example of this. If I only remember the meaning of a word because I put it in the context of a word that was previously tested, it doesn’t make sense when I use it later. The word that was previously tested will most likely not come before the word that was tested in the text that will be read later.

In law school, however, the option of staying in order makes perfect sense. Here, students learn schemes. Schemes that can consist of many bullet points with corresponding sub-points. Some textbooks consist of a single scheme in which all information is incorporated in the form of sub-points. These schemes must be worked through in an exam. From start to finish. From main point down to detail. The effect that I remember the following exam point based on a previous one is not just an additional memory aid at this point. It is absolutely sensible to always think in context.

So perhaps it would be worth considering offering an option to allow the order to be maintained when learning.

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https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1990296174

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The most direct solution to that is more effective card/note design, so that each of your cards can stand on its own. Memorizing schemes/ordered lists is hard, but there are ways to do it. In addition to the Enhanced Cloze add-on linked by Keks, see – Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge - SuperMemo for techniques to study sets and enumerations. [I don’t know if you’re studying in a common or code-law jurisdiction, so I shouldn’t try to give you any specific examples.]


In the big picture, what you’re asking for is unlikely to ever be added to Anki, because there’s no way to “spaced-repetition” it. [I’m obviously not the decider on things like that, but you seem interested in the reasoning.] If you have a scheme of 6 cards that need to be studied in order every time, how does Anki determine which grading information to use for each card?

If it uses each card’s own grading information, the cards won’t be in order the next time you see them. They won’t even necessarily be scheduled on the same day, because you might struggle with one part of the scheme more than others.

So Anki would have to pick one grade and apply it to the entire set of cards. It really only makes sense for Anki to schedule based on the worst grade in the set – but you’ll have to study the whole scheme more often because of the one part you got wrong. And suddenly, that sounds a lot like that is just one big card spread across 6 pages. :sweat_smile: As a happy coincidence – that’s a better way to approach designing a card for it!

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In code-law jurisdiction. :wink:

The link is interesting. But I’m already implementing a lot of it. I also find the Enhanced Cloze add-on from keks exciting. But I can’t see how it can help me with my suggestion.

I don’t think we think very differently. My idea was never to abolish the principle of spaced repetitions. That is precisely the purpose of Anki. It would be crazy to try to shake it up. If I had to choose, I would always give preference to spaced repetition over learning in context.

But my suggestion is not at all opposed to spaced repetition. Because I’m only interested in the cards that are already due in learning. These could easily remain in the initial order. Between these cards there are of course large gaps for the cards that are not yet due. But I would see just maintaining the order of the due cards as a benefit.

Ultimately, the situation is comparable in the context of repetition. And there you have the option to sort the due cards by Ascending Order or Order gathered.

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Then I’m useless to you! :sweat_smile:

I still don’t understand how. :thinking: If you get cards 1, 2, and 3 of the scheme correct, they advance to the next learning step (or graduate to Review). But then if you get card 4 of the scheme wrong, it needs to repeat the current step. How would you propose showing them as 1-2-3-4 again?

Those are gather/sort options are possible for New cards, for when they are first introduced. But there is nothing comparable for Learn or Review cards.

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And it gets much worse. I’m from Germany. I once read that 80 percent of all laws written worldwide can be found in German law. I can’t really believe that. But it would suit my people.

You’re right. That refers to new cards. Sorry. My mistake.

What I mean is this: I learn 10 cards. On the fifth day I open Anki and cards 3, 5 and 8 are due. Then I wish that the cards appear in exactly that order. And not in the order 8, 5, 3. Do you understand what I mean? Of course that would make sense for the reviews as well.

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Ah, okay, now I think I’ve caught up with you. I can kinda-sorta see why you might want that. I still think you’ll be much more impressed with yourself when you can recite the list starting at any point. And interspersed among the [insert suitably large number here] cards you’re studying each day, I don’t think you’ll notice what order those 3 cards arrived in.

But I can think of 2 things that could work. Longshot ideas, that I just made up now – with the added bonus that they seem like a lot of overhead and bother – so I can’t say I’d recommend trying either one! –

(1) In a Filtered Deck, you can order the cards by “Oldest seen first” (Filtered Decks - Anki Manual). So, IF that means down-to-the-second (it might just be based on date, I don’t know), and IF you’ve only ever studied the cards in order, then this might keep them in order. You’d have to rebuild all of your due reviews into a filtered deck every day, and make sure you weren’t leaving any behind. It also will result in your hardest cards (with the shortest intervals, so they were seen most recently) coming at the end of your study session, which seems awful.

(2) In a Standard deck, you can order your Reviews by “Deck, then due date” (Deck Options - Anki Manual – and note the caution against using this order at all). So IF you separate all of your cards by card number into Card 1, Card 2, Card 3, etc. decks, and IF you have no overdue cards (because their due dates would move them out of order), then this might keep them in order when you click on their parent deck to study. The thought of managing all of those decks makes this idea particularly unappealing.

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I would probably be. :star_struck: But I can live with being a little less impressed with myself. And I actually already have the feeling that learning systematically is good for me (see below). It gives me a better overview.

The other way around. :wink: The three cards represent all the cards that are due on a given day. I don’t see any other cards. Only these cards. The gaps are the cards that I don’t see on that day. If you’re interested: I once explained on Reddit how exactly I process my learning material with Anki. And since I always import an entire book, the order of the cards is correct from the beginning and remains the same. Maybe now you’ll understand better why staying in the system is so important to me.

That would be really crazy! :joy: Creating hundreds of decks every day, only to delete them again in the evening. But you’re right. Technically, it should work.

This is it! Well, almost. Anyway, you’ve put me on the right track. According to the Anki manual, the “Oldest seen first” option only refers to the reviews. And there, only to when I last saw the card. Not when I created it. But Filtered Decks is still the way to go. I saw that there is also an “Order added” option there. And that’s exactly what I’m looking for. I’ve just tested it. And for now, it makes me really happy. :upside_down_face:

So thank you very much for your input. This makes me feel much more comfortable!

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What I just noticed: In my link I described that I can create the cards for a book step by step. And thus delve deeper into a topic step by step. Then, from the second set of cards that I add in Anki, the order added in Anki of course no longer corresponds to the order in the script. Annoying! :roll_eyes: It would be great if there was an order option that allowed me to sort the filtered cards according to a consecutive number in a separate field for each card. Excel could simply enter a consecutive number in this additional field in the script. Anki would then sort accordingly.

That would be a nice innovation. And one that would probably be easy to implement. Maybe Damien is reading this and will be inspired. :wink:

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If you have a consecutively-numbered field, you can sort by that field in the browse screen, then use the reposition tool to order the new cards in that order.

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Many thanks, dae! :+1:

I’ve thought of that too.

I’ve found an even better workaround for me. I now create all the cards for a learning area in one set and import them into Anki. Then I start from scratch in Excel and create the cards step by step as I want to deepen my knowledge. In the new csv file, a macro creates a search string for all new cards created in a deepening level. To do this, I use a field that is unique to each card. Since Anki allows a very long search string - I suspect 32,767 characters? - this allows to find all the new cards to be deepened. I move these into a subfolder that grows with each new set of cards. And there I can then learn in the desired order. Because the “order added” is retained.

The additional advantage is that I can see how my deepening progress is developing, not just in the script in the gray first column. I can now compare the statistics in Anki from folders and subfolders. That’s nice.

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