HI! I have a question about using the again button with the FSRS algorithm. I’ve been studying the AnKing deck, and I have pretty much clicked again on every new card unless it was ridiculously easy since I unsuspend cards after Lecture or watching a B&B video the same day. I always felt that even though I got it “correct” it was because of my short term memory or seeing the exact phrasing from the B&B video not actually knowing the card.
I realized now that was probably not the best approach, and that I should have probably just hit good anyways and let the FSRS algo adapt over time, but at this point I feel that I might be too far in with a few thousand cards unsuspended. My RMSE is 3.55% for my new block deck with a 0.9 retention and 6.11% for my old material with a 0.87 retention. Now the ‘good’ button sometimes goes up to 10 days and even if I got the card right I feel uncomfortable with sending it out that far since our exams are every 2 weeks.
Would you recommend that I keep answering how I have been, or should I pivot to hitting “Good” when I “know” a card I learned on the same day? If I pivot, what do you recommend I do so that the cards aren’t scheduled so far out that it takes a few months to fix?
We humans have a terrible perception of how much we can remember (or how often we need to see the card). The algorithm is used to ensure that you see the cards at the optimal time such that you remember more with lesser input of time, kind of.
A solution to your problem could be to use the default parameters and ignore reviews before “today” (or the day you stopped doing this). I’m not sure how effective this would be however.
You could also add another learning step (learn how to do this here) and see the card once again after some time.
There are people who do perfectly fine even if they start learning the material on Anki itself (Again if they don’t know when they see it for the first time or else Good or Easy).
Personally, I think your issue might be solved with the learning steps part. Try it out for a couple days and then see if it works for you.
It’s generally not advisable to change your grading behaviour. Starting all your cards with an “Again” rating is fine. For the very first ratings your cards have, Anki calculates their stability seperately for each 4 grades. If you change your grading habits now, it’ll cause issues.