First "Good" interval is insanely long with FSRS

Anki FSRS
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Recently, I optimized my parameters, and my intervals for new cards are INSANE. The first good will be 12-14 days. I feel like this is not realistic; there is just no way I will see a blurb of information for the first time and remember it in 2 weeks. I attached my parameters. Looks like my initial stability for Good and Easy are very high, but everything else is great. My exams are typically every 5 weeks, so having new card intervals be 2 weeks just doesn’t work, especially when I’m doing new cards a week before the exam.

I will say I haven’t been as consistent with Anki recently (sometimes skipping 1-2 days and then catching up on reviews on day 3). But I get way more wrong during reviews when this happens, and I also don’t know why it would jump to 13 days for the first “Good” interval.

What do you guys think? Should I blindly trust FSRS or tweak the parameters myself?

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I feel like this is not realistic; there is just no way I will see a blurb of information for the first time and remember it in 2 weeks.

I mean thats probably what you actually did for those 7757 past reviews 90% of the time.

Dont forget DR is exactly that. You will forget things. FSRS compute that you should forget around 10% during that lapse of time.

Wanna forget nothing ? Put 99% DR. But then you will review everything everyday

The goal is to find the sweet spot. Having higher interval for 90% is a good thing, it means you remember in general pretty well.

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Yea that’s true. It’s kind of scary though to do new cards a week before an exam and not see them again till after the exam. But I guess I’ll trust it.

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You definitely shouldn’t tweak your parameters, but you don’t need to “blindly” trust the algorithm either. Are those really the only 2 options? :sweat_smile:

If your parameters are well-optimized on a substantial amount of review history (7757 reviews is plenty), it’s possible those parameters are correct, even if you think they aren’t.

  • Your Desired Retention (DR) is set to 90% – how does that compare to your retention results – Stats > Retention?
  • What are your learning steps?

FSRS doesn’t schedule cards based on your exams. If you need to front-load your learning to keep up with a tighter exam schedule, you can increase your DR to shorten your intervals overall.

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Thank you for your reply! I haven’t tested out these new parameters yet, but I’ll check my retention results in 2 weeks and see if I still hit my DR when all those new cards come back haha.

My learning steps are just: 15m

I think keeping my DR at 90% works great for me in terms of the number of reviews and how much I want to retain. I don’t want to shorten all my intervals overall. I’m just worried about my first interval because my exams are only a few weeks apart.

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