1 question : As the exams approach, I should to increase the desired retention number ? , for example, from now (0.90) to 15 days before exam (0.95)
You can do it. However, I don’t have any experience with such an approach.
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My rather inexperienced brain says that’s an AMAZING IDEA. I literally never heard anyone proposing that before. Please do it and share with us if your experiment goes wrong (or doesn’t). I don’t think it would go wrong. Also if you do it you would also have to “reschedule” to actually get the due dates changed. Good luck for your exams!
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Very good , if I change the desired retention 15 days before exam to 0.95 , should i optimize parameters ?
Parameters and desired retention are independent. Btw, please read this: Reddit - Dive into anything
Especially link 3.
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See optimizing parameters have nothing to do with Desired Retention. You should read the manual and the FSRS wiki which is linked in the manual. Parameters are not trained on what retention you set AFAIK. It has to do with your review history. You should be fine optimizing from time to time. Maybe once a month.
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@Expertium Thank you for the details above. I have my USMLE Step 1 on 6/26 and transitioned to FSRS from SM2 today. Couple of questions:
1- Max interval is currently set at 240. Does this need to be changed to 30/45 days ? Saw Ankings video that suggested 1825
2- Should the new card order be random or sequential with Anki 24+ and FSRS ? Settings suggested sequential but current setting is set to random
3- Since the exam is in less than 60 days, should I regenerate cards now or ease into it ? What choice will reap the benefit of FSRS faster ?
4- The new Anki update has a section that says don’t count reviews before “date” - What is this date supposed to be ?
Looking forward in getting some support, appreciate it
- Doesn’t this come with an explanation? If you set it to August 1947 then FSRS optimizer won’t use the reviews before this date. Simple! (You probabaly don’t need that IMO)
I don’t understand what’s Anki 24 or or 6/26 mean so can’t answer the questions above that
6/26 is the date my exam is on. 26th June and Anki 24+ is the Anki version I have 24.0.1
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If you understand what these settings do then you don’t need advice from others. I will just say don’t do anything you don’t understand. 1825 sounds like a very arbitrary number. Why does Anking want to have interval always lower or equal to that?
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You don’t need that. Set it to sequential and change the gather/sort order. (why do you think Expertium can tell you something the app isn’t already telling you?)
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Sorry I don’t know what regenerate means.
- You don’t need to change your max interval to something that short. The default is 100 years – but lots of folks are happy with intervals closer to the 5 years that Anking is recommending to you. You want let your easy cards stretch out to long intervals, so you have time to study the harder cards. In the run-up to the exam, you can use Filter/Custom decks to focus on any topics you want, or to get one last look at the cards with long intervals or few reps. Filtered Decks - Anki Manual
- I’m not sure if you’re asking about New card insertion order (where new cards are created in the New-queue), or New card gather/sort order (which cards will be introduced each day and in what order) – but you can set those to whatever you want. Anki and FSRS will work just fine with any of the settings. You can find explanations of each option behind the in-app help
, or in the manual – Deck Options - Anki Manual . - Since you’re just switching to FSRS now, rescheduling usually isn’t recommended. “Which one will reap the benefits of FSRS faster?” Rescheduling – but it will also reap the negatives: 1st time rescheduling often results in a significant backlog of cards. If you want to satisfy your curiosity, use the FSRS Helper add-on to “Reschedule all cards” and watch what changes on your main Decks screen. If you don’t like what you see – Edit > Undo will put everything back.
- Excluding certain reviews from optimization is a way to deal with review history that is problematic for FSRS. [The most common use of that will be for folks who have “misused” the grading buttons – giving incorrect answers a Hard grade instead of Again.] You probably don’t need to worry about that.
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Thanks a lot for these details, super helpful
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Rescheduling Can be helpful when you change some FSRS parameters… I think there will be no problem if you use load balancer…
Possibly, but that doesn’t apply to someone enabling FSRS for the first time.
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Here’s what I would do for cards I want to learn before an exam:
- Move them to a new deck, call it “Exam” or something, and give them their own preset, maybe also called “Exam” so you can use it for exams in the future. Optimize them or use default parameters if they are new cards.
- Set desired retention to 0.97. You really want to know these cards, so might as well set it to the highest level that isn’t too crazy. This way you won’t need to worry about max intervals, you’re gonna be seeing each card plenty before the exam.
- If these are not new cards, then create a custom deck with these search parameters:
deck:Exam prop:r<0.97and study all the cards that come up. These will include cards that aren’t due yet, that’s what you want. Depending on how many there are and how long I’ve been studying them, I might even just do a reset on them. Just set them all back to new and start over with the new preset. You can keep your study history if you want, but at least you’ll make sure none slip through the cracks.
As long as you set the desired retention to 0.97 and study each card at least once at the beginning, you won’t have to think about missing any going forward. You will see each of them plenty of times. After the exam, put the cards back into whatever deck they belonged in before so they aren’t on the exam preset anymore.