Is it normal for the retention rate after 3 day interval to be 75%? I’m using the anking settings (Learning: 25m 1d, Graduating: 3d) and I get really frustrated when I can’t remember the cards after 3 days, even though most of them are difficult anatomy cards and I’ve pressed again ~10 times to be able to memorize them in the first place.
There’s no way to answer whether that’s normal or not-normal.
It sounds like you’re not learning the information before you start studying it in Anki – and like you’re not learning it very well while you study it in Anki. There are remedies to that. But if you’re just clicking Again without doing anything to increase your chances of getting the answer right the next time you study the card – you’ll continue to struggle.
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Why 25 minutes?
The standard interval is 1 minute, then 10 minutes. But even in just 1 minute you can forget a lot—especially if during that time you manage to go through more than 10 cards. In that case, the interval should even be reduced to 30 seconds.
Here’s what an AI would tell you about how much you’ll remember after 10 minutes:
0 = 100%
1 = 90.5%
2 = 81.9%
3 = 74.1%
4 = 67.0%
5 = 60.7%
6 = 54.9%
7 = 49.7%
8 = 44.9%
9 = 40.7%
10 = 36.8%
But I’ll repeat again for many people: this is based on experimental data, on ideal cards and an ideal approach—when you study in a way that allows you to reproduce the information out loud. It’s not enough to just look at something and believe you remember it—can you actually reproduce it or describe what was there?
And again: if in that short time of 1 minute you went through 5 items, a person can even remember their sequence. But if there are already 10 or 20 items, one piece of information starts overwriting another—you may only remember the beginning and the end. That’s how the brain works. But Anki often doesn’t take this into account and doesn’t explain that if you’re “learning” in a second per card, you could theoretically go through 60 cards in a minute—but there will be no real effect.
For comparison, the record in the U.S. for memorizing a playing card is just over one second. But an average person needs about 6–10 seconds of focused attention to actually encode something into memory. Only after that can you spend about 2 seconds recalling it during review. I’d even allow 3 seconds—but no more.
So the ideal is:
- 1 second for something you already know
- 2–3 seconds is acceptable
Right now, I’m finishing updates to my add-on “Simple Image Occlusion,” where I added a game mode: if there are around 10 occlusions on an image and text descriptions are provided, you are shown (and/or hear via TTS) a word from one of the rectangles, and you need to quickly click the correct one.
Of course, there is also an input mode for verification, but the whole point of memorization is that you should be able to reproduce the information almost instantly. If you only recall it after seeing it, that’s not true memorization—it’s recognition memory.
I actually make all the decks myself, and before I make them I go
through the slide lectures and understand them and highlight the parts I
would turn into flashcards. And before pressing again, I make sure that
I can recall that information without looking at card itself.
And I was just using the anatomy cards as an example, since I usually
press again just twice. So that’s why it’s weird that I forget a good
portion of them after just 3 days, and I can’t reduce the intervals
either since I’m already falling behind on cards.
If that means you look away from the card and repeat it to yourself (or something like that) – I’d argue that’s not enough. You forgot the answer to this card, which means you need to do something to “relearn” it. That might be different things for different information and different learners, but it’s definitely more than checking to see if you can hold it in your working memory for a second (which accomplishes basically nothing).
Since you’re not using FSRS – the more recent scheduling algorithm that customizes itself to your memory – I’m going to recommend that too – Deck Options - Anki Manual . Follow those instructions, including about learning steps.
- If you’re struggling to graduate cards from Learn, you might do better if your single learning step is shorter than 25m.
- Once you optimize your parameters, if you want to post those here as text, we can take a look at those and see if there are any red flags.
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Setting aside that your list of figures doesn’t make any sense (0 of what? 1 of what?) – there’s no way your AI would be able to provide any useful estimates for any particular learner without any data. Posting things like that (even with a warning) just isn’t helpful.
If that means you look away from the card and repeat it to yourself (or something like that) – I’d argue that’s not enough. You forgot the answer to this card, which means you need to do something to “relearn” it.
There’s an addon that changes the “Again” button to immediately show the card’s face. You don’t even have to look away to see it. They’re saying that if you can’t remember something just by turning the card over, how will you remember it after a standard minute? So the AI even shows higher percentages from the initial 100% at the zero point (that same 0 you don’t understand). So it’s all individual; a real person might remember everything perfectly after 25 minutes.