There is a conflict between the recommended ratio for new card and review limits in Anki and the calculation results from the FSRS Simulator. Which one should be followed?
Calculations in the FSRS Simulator indicate that setting a daily new card limit of 200 paired with a daily review limit of 255 delivers optimal memorization outcomes.
However, a guiding principle states: “Learning new cards generates extra short-term review workloads, so the daily new card limit should be set to less than one-tenth of the daily review limit.”
Which of the above two standards should take precedence? If the latter principle is to be followed, does that mean I should simply set the review limit to 9999? My actual daily review volume never exceeds 2000 at maximum.
Would be best. You don’t want to set a limit, since you’ll artificially create a backlog that way which potentially hurts retention of those affected cards.
I never heard this one before. But in general: study all due cards every day and prevent backlogs. Then introduce as many new cards as you feel comfortable with. You don’t have to introduce new cards daily either. And if you don’t know with how many new cards you feel comfortable with, then start with a lower daily new card amount first (e.g. 5 new cards per day).
It’s not entirely clear whether you mean the “FSRS Simulator” or the “Help Me Decide” feature related to Desired Retention (DR) [which when opened is called the “FSRS Desired Retention Simulator”].[1]
However –
Both are experimental features, so I wouldn’t entirely rely on either one of them.
Those figures don’t sound even close to correct – even if you were achieving retention levels far above your DR. I’m concerned you’re not getting reliable information from the simulator, or you’re misinterpreting what you’re getting.
That advice is a useful tool to help beginners understand that the number of New cards they introduce is a big factor in determining their future daily workload. The 10x estimate (or 7-10x or 8-10x) is quite conservative, so it won’t necessarily apply to any specific user. That’s especially true in the FSRS-era, when every user’s scheduling is customized to their learning patterns and goals.
You can use it to make sure you set your daily max review limit high enough at the start for what your potential maximum workload could be, but it’s not precise enough to work backwards and figure out how to target a specific figure.
The best advice if you’re considering limiting your max daily reviews is – don’t. Set it to unlimited (“9999”). The entire point of having Anki/FSRS schedule your cards is that you need to study them when they are scheduled. Anything that gets in the way of that is likely to reduce retention.
If you have a workload problem (and it sounds like you do), there are probably better ways to deal with it.
And yes, those names are a bit confusing, so hopefully someone is working on fixing that. ↩︎