Hi everyone, I would appreciate some help understanding what happened after optimizing FSRS.
I have used Anki for around nine months and read most of the FSRS manuals before starting. On my previous profile, I optimized approximately once a month without any problems. I have never misused Hard and Again. I have also never changed the FSRS parameters.
I created a separate MCAT profile on June 4 and used the default FSRS parameters for about 1.5 months. Everything appeared normal before optimization:
Median difficulty: 0%.
Median stability: 4.3 months.
Average retrievability: 97%.
For example, one card previously had an interval of about 10 days. After optimization, pressing Good gave it an interval of over one year. Its card information showed 0% difficulty and 386 days of stability, despite the card having only a short review history and one previous lapse.
Increasing desired retention did not meaningfully fix the issue. I restored a backup, which returned everything to normal, but the same problem happens every time I optimize.
Has anyone seen this before? Does it suggest a problem with the optimized parameters, preset structure, review history, or an add-on? Any advice on how to diagnose this safely would be greatly appreciated.
The main thing that suggests is a lot of your cards are easy (at least among the cards you’ve studied so far) – or that there isn’t a lot of variation between them in how easy they are. It’s not inherently a problem.
You’ve got 4K reviews in this preset, which is enough for FSRS to start seeing patterns, but it isn’t a ton. How many active cards is that – Stats > Card Counts (Young + Mature, not suspended)?
Did you start out by choosing topics in the deck that you already know pretty well?
For this card, you’ve often been studying it overdue. It looks like the default parameters haven’t been a very good fit for you, since they weren’t giving you very much of a boost in scheduling when you got it right anyway.
I don’t know what happened earlier in its review history, but just looking at the past few revlogs –
due 14 June – studied 14 June (on-time), next interval 3d
due 17 June – studied 21 June (4d late), next interval 5d
due 26 June – studied 7 July (12d late), next interval 10d
due 17 July – studied 25 July (8d late) …
If studying lots of overdue cards and getting them correct is a common pattern for you – your optimized parameters would need to make a significant adjustment for that, because FSRS has watched you study cards that you have a lower chance of getting right, and you’re getting them right anyway, 92% of the time.
It should have – but not until the next time each card was studied and needed to be scheduled for a due date.
Not what you asked about – but do you mean a completely separate profile, or just a separate Options preset? An individual user hardly ever needs multiple profiles, and it introduces an unnecessary extra risk of data loss from confusion between the multiple AnkiWeb accounts you’d need. You should consider merging your collections into a single profile.
No, I am learning MCAT materials from scratch, so the cards are pretty much new to me. Quite difficult content.
Yes, I have a lot of overdue cards to be honest, but usually get those done within 10 days. I also have other cards in the deck which I only reviewed once with an interval of 3d, and after optimization, its next interval becomes 9 months. There is no way I can memorize that card in that time
Are there any ways which I can undo this? Or should I change my learning habits? The scheduling right now clearly isn’t fit for me. I know I should trust the algorithm, but reviewing it only once and then seeing the card almost a year later isn’t really gonna work for me.
Oh sorry I didn’t clarify this. I created a separate profile for MCAT and deleted the original profile which I use for my year 2 undergrad studies. So there is only one AnkiWeb account with one profile.
May I ask what should I do now regarding the FSRS settings? I am using the previous backup but I don’t think this is gonna be an effective solution. Below are some images regarding my stats before and after FSRS optimization.
