Anki Central

[mehc012]

Hm, I got rid of the exclude list completely, and instead used the box above that which lets me choose which tags to require. Wait, I don't really understand. So I made a separate tag for each chapter I have covered. I don't really see why excluding all of the tags that were made for gen chem, orgo, bio, physics would also exclude some of my psych/soc cards? What do you mean by "co-existing"? I thought you make a tag, and then that labels the card to be for that specific tag, so if you choose to exclude that tag, then all cards created with that tag won't be included.

I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding something. I probably didn't do this whole tagging thing efficiently, I just labeled every chapter with an extensive tag that included the name of the chapter, like "Chapter_6_Gen_Chem_Isomerism_and_Structures" so that I could just have one big mcat deck and then individually study subjects later by excluding tags that I didn't want to study that day.....




So I guess what you mean is that when I excluded things, if they included in their titles words like "Chapter" "and" "the", those would automatically get excluded, even if I chose to study "Chapter_6_The_Psychological_and_Sociology_Chapter"?

No, I just think it overcomplicated things and you may not be tagging what you think you're tagging in the midst of the overwhelming amount of unnecessary filters you're using.

I don't see very many included tags up above.

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[mavric1298]

@acetylmandarin
Easy-ish fix - you need "higher" level tagging, so use the browser, search and pull up all the cards for each subject, and add a subject tag to all of them (under add tag). Then do you custom study off that tag

The mistake you made was instead of the complicated structure, you should have used multiple tags that looked something like this (this was my scheme, you could vary it however you wanted but just to give you an idea);
"MCAT GenChem IsomerismAndStructure"

Then you could custom study off, MCAT, subject, topic

 

[deleted647690]

No, I just think it overcomplicated things and you may not be tagging what you think you're tagging in the midst of the overwhelming amount of unnecessary filters you're using.

I don't see very many included tags up above.

Like if you tag something as "Orgo_Chapter_6_Lipids" and then tag something else as "Psych_Chapter_5_Maslow" and then you just wanted to study psych stuff one day and exclude everything else, if you chose to exclude the "orgo_chapter_6_lipids" would you unintentionally exclude your "psych_chapter_5_Maslow" since it includes the word "chapter"? Even if you did not choose the specific "psych_chapter_5_maslow" when choosing what to exclude?

 

[mehc012]

Like if you tag something as "Orgo_Chapter_6_Lipids" and then tag something else as "Psych_Chapter_5_Maslow" and then you just wanted to study psych stuff one day and exclude everything else, if you chose to exclude the "orgo_chapter_6_lipids" would you unintentionally exclude your "psych_chapter_5_Maslow" since it includes the word "chapter"? Even if you did not choose the specific "psych_chapter_5_maslow" when choosing what to exclude?

No.
But if you have like 50 tags excluded and included, when it's not sorting the way you want, it's going to be really difficult to figure out where the error is. Which is fine if you need 50 parameters, but if you don't you're just making your job harder.

@acetylmandarin
Easy-ish fix - you need "higher" level tagging, so use the browser, search and pull up all the cards for each subject, and add a subject tag to all of them (under add tag). Then do you custom study off that tag

The mistake you made was instead of the complicated structure, you should have used multiple tags that looked something like this (this was my scheme, you could vary it however you wanted but just to give you an idea);
"MCAT GenChem IsomerismAndStructure"

Then you could custom study off, MCAT, subject, topic

What @mavric1298 said.

 

[deleted647690]

Thank you for your help guys. I'll just not exclude those tags and just use the required box, since that seems to work.

 

[chillingpanda]

When going through a ppt, do you make cards for each sentence? How do you know if you should make a card when you stumble across information? I can never differentiate between important and non important info. Also, do you have a link to a deck that has effective cards that I can study, so I can tailor my cards for the future

 

[mehc012]

When going through a ppt, do you make cards for each sentence? How do you know if you should make a card when you stumble across information? I can never differentiate between important and non important info. Also, do you have a link to a deck that has effective cards that I can study, so I can tailor my cards for the future

I don't go through ppts very often. It's just not my style. Beyond that, how much you pull out for a card is going to differ depending on who makes the ppt. Figuring out what's important and not important isn't really an Anki question...you may be better off asking classmates or upper classmen who know your school's style.
The Anki manual linked in the first post has a section on making effective cards. My first post has multiple example decks posted.

 

[chillingpanda]

I don't go through ppts very often. It's just not my style. Beyond that, how much you pull out for a card is going to differ depending on who makes the ppt. Figuring out what's important and not important isn't really an Anki question...you may be better off asking classmates or upper classmen who know your school's style.
The Anki manual linked in the first post has a section on making effective cards. My first post has multiple example decks posted.

Can you link me to the example decks or show me where it's at? I just went back to the first post of this thread and I don't see any

 

[mehc012]

Can you link me to the example decks or show me where it's at? I just went back to the first post of this thread and I don't see any

There's a description of where to download a simple deck. But at any rate, my MCAT Anki deck is linked in my signature in every post I make. Also Anki's website has an entire section full of downloadable decks.

 

[chillingpanda]

There's a description of where to download a simple deck. But at any rate, my MCAT Anki deck is linked in my signature in every post I make. Also Anki's website has an entire section full of downloadable decks.

Gotcha, just downloaded it. Also, when you say "Keep 1 deck for each of the classes you are currently taking." do you mean you have one deck for every class you are taking or a separate deck for each class? Like if you're taking bio and genetics, would they both be in the same deck, or you have one deck for biology and one deck for genetics?

 

[mehc012]

Gotcha, just downloaded it. Also, when you say "Keep 1 deck for each of the classes you are currently taking." do you mean you have one deck for every class you are taking or a separate deck for each class? Like if you're taking bio and genetics, would they both be in the same deck, or you have one deck for biology and one deck for genetics?

I would do 2 separate ones.

 

[chillingpanda]

I would do 2 separate ones.

Last question. What's your thought process on when you should make a basic, cloze, or the other types of cards you have? Sorry, it just came up as I was looking through your deck. I'm probably overthinking this, but I just want to be efficient as you are when using Anki.

 

[mehc012]

Last question. What's your thought process on when you should make a basic, cloze, or the other types of cards you have? Sorry, it just came up as I was looking through your deck. I'm probably overthinking this, but I just want to be efficient as you are when using Anki.

Whatever seems easiest at the time. I used to do mostly basic, now I've transitioned to Cloze but that initial practice in being explicit about what I was testing myself on to make Basics was crucial. If it's a large volume chart, like Muscles, maybe I'll do a custom template. At some point, you just have to start DOING it and it will work itself it.

Sent from my phone, sorry for any typos or brevity.

 

[mavric1298]

I try to use cloze almost exclusively rather than basic, because it allows me to put information and recall in context. My thoughts on this are a) it's easier to remember something with context and rarely will I ever need to stone cold call something up. B) what's the point of remembering some fact if I don't know how to apply it. It basically means I'm able to memorize a whole sentence rather than a flash card word because I'm more actively reading/applying the knowledge every time I do the card.

Then I use lots of image occlusions and customs cards.




Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[mehc012]

I try to use cloze almost exclusively rather than basic, because it allows me to put information and recall in context. My thoughts on this are a) it's easier to remember something with context and rarely will I ever need to stone cold call something up. B) what's the point of remembering some fact if I don't know how to apply it. It basically means I'm able to memorize a whole sentence rather than a flash card word because I'm more actively reading/applying the knowledge every time I do the card.

Then I use lots of image occlusions and customs cards.




Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

You can make Basic cards which require application of the knowledge...not just Word | Definition, but "3rd order question you think of yourself which uses multiple concepts" | "Answer", etc. Making those kinds of cards is a great learning exercise, as well. I actually try to minimize the context in my cards to avoid memorizing the irrelevant cues rather than the information, but then I'm the kind of person who ends up remembering "ohh, this was the question which misspelled 'the' as 'teh', the answer is "blargdorf barblesnart 304023534646545433" and the second word is bolded." That's not a useful form of memorization, so my cards aim to utterly diminish irrelevant cues or distinctive features of each individual card beyond the information. If I do Cloze, for example, I often try to have multiple cards with the exact same sentence structure with only 1 pair of words clozed, so that I'm forced to learn the association between those 2 words...for example "A positive {{c1::blargdorf}} test indicates the presence of {{c2::barblesnart}}" and "A positive {{c1::bluefeller}} test indicates the presence of {{c2::kahlualel}}" and "A positive {{c1::bubblesnap}} test indicates the presence of {{c2::berrfark}}."

It's also why I don't use Image Occlusion a ton...I tend to recognize the location and dimensions of the answer box more quickly than I am able to trace the labels to see what structure is being indicated, so it's memorizing the wrong information. I know not everyone does these things, but I'd bet that more people use those unhelpful contextual clues than realize it, so their memory of the information may be worse in a different context than their Anki deck.

Generally, all of my extra context and information shows up AFTER I answer...I use the 'Extra' field in Cloze a lot, which is why I've mostly moved to it.

 

[t5Nitro]

Does anybody know if I can take new cards from multiple decks, add a common tag, and then study those cards while counting as reviewing the new cards? If I custom study by tag it won't reduce the new card count. I think I'll have to move the tagged cards into their own deck to do this so I won't be able to send them back to their individual parent decks later. I'll ask here first in case anybody knows a way to do it.

 

[mehc012]

Does anybody know if I can take new cards from multiple decks, add a common tag, and then study those cards while counting as reviewing the new cards? If I custom study by tag it won't reduce the new card count. I think I'll have to move the tagged cards into their own deck to do this so I won't be able to send them back to their individual parent decks later. I'll ask here first in case anybody knows a way to do it.

You can, but it's slightly more complicated than it ought to be. I can give more details when I get somewhere I can plug my computer in.

Sent from my phone, sorry for any typos or brevity.

 

[t5Nitro]

You can, but it's slightly more complicated than it ought to be. I can give more details when I get somewhere I can plug my computer in.

Sent from my phone, sorry for any typos or brevity.

Sounds good! Thanks. This would save me a lot of time maintaining deck organization.

 

[mehc012]

Does anybody know if I can take new cards from multiple decks, add a common tag, and then study those cards while counting as reviewing the new cards? If I custom study by tag it won't reduce the new card count. I think I'll have to move the tagged cards into their own deck to do this so I won't be able to send them back to their individual parent decks later. I'll ask here first in case anybody knows a way to do it.

OK, so this is something Anki is not very well set up to do, but it's totally possible.

First things first: the new card count is typically not reduced when you Custom Study by tag due to a weird quirk of Anki where Learning cards are reset to New cards when you send them back to their original decks. Say you have 10 New Cards. The standard (1 10) Learn settings require you to see each card at least 2x in order for it to graduate to a Review Card...it starts as New, you see it once and it becomes a Learning Card, and then you see it again 10min later and it 'graduates' to a Review Card.

If you make a Custom Study deck, pull those New Cards in, review them once, and then send them back to their original decks, they will revert back to New status as soon as you send them back, even if you check the 'Reschedule Cards based on my responses' in the Custom Study Options. This is because, as I said before, Learning status is not preserved when you send them back. If you review them all, wait an hour until they show up as due Learning cards in the Custom Study deck (the red count) and then review and graduate them all, they will be sent back to their parent decks as Review Cards, which is what you wanted from the beginning. I do not know why Anki does this, and it's one of my biggest peeves with the program, but there you have it.

So...how to fix this? Well, you could wait around every time you review new cards this way to make sure you got them all, but that's cumbersome and means you cannot Rebuild, add more cards to the Custom Study, do a different Custom Study in the interim, etc. It also means that any cards you get wrong will make you wait longer, etc. It may cause you to change your Learn settings to streamline things, which is frankly unnecessary. So. What's a better solution?

Here's what I would do:
- Make a Custom Study deck. Choose all of your tags here, if you'd like, or if you're familiar with Browser searches just make one with a irrelevant parameter and then enter in the specific filters you want later(we'll be going into the Custom Study Deck Options no matter what, so it may be easier to just type out your parameters when you open that window...this also lets you filter by more than just card state and tag).
- Remove the 'deck:"DeckName"' from the Custom Study Filter. Open the Custom Study Deck, hit 'Options', change the 'Filter/Search' text so that it is nothing but "is:new tag:TagName" (or whatever complicated search you'd prefer, if you're comfortable with Browser searching).
- Check 'Reschedule cards based on..." in Custom Study Options. In that same Options window, check this box.
- Check 'Custom Steps' and set to '1' - Same window, all the way at the bottom. This is the key bit. It means that as soon as you answer any New Card correctly, it will be graduated to a Review card. You lose your customized Learning steps, but you get more flexibility with the Custom Study settings you want.

Hope that was helpful.

 

[t5Nitro]

@mehc012 It works! The learning steps should follow those of the parent deck once I delete the custom study and they're sent back to the parent deck as review cards? At least it will get them back on track to seeing the cards more frequently if I get them wrong. Thanks again. It's exactly what I was looking for.

 

[mehc012]

@mehc012 It works! The learning steps should follow those of the parent deck once I delete the custom study and they're sent back to the parent deck as review cards? At least it will get them back on track to seeing the cards more frequently if I get them wrong. Thanks again. It's exactly what I was looking for.

The intervals will increase the way you'd normally expect to see once you send them back to the parent decks, yes. (I don't say 'Learning steps' because technically those only apply to the initial stage going from New card status to Review card status...but that's a technicality that you probably don't care about in day to day usage, it will just affect how some minor details of the statistics are calculated.)

Glad I could help!

 

[deleted647690]

I have a question about cloze deletion. I made a bunch of mcat cards where I'd put in a paragraph of info and then cloze delete select terms, like this,
"The c1: [dog] ran. c2: [The] cat sat. The car c3:[drove] over the bump.

I thought it would present the card to me with all three of these terms blanked, and then I could hit spacebar and bring them up in succession. However, the cards are showing up with only one term blanked out. How do I fix this?

 

[mehc012]

I have a question about cloze deletion. I made a bunch of mcat cards where I'd put in a paragraph of info and then cloze delete select terms, like this,
"The c1: [dog] ran. c2: [The] cat sat. The car c3:[drove] over the bump.

I thought it would present the card to me with all three of these terms blanked, and then I could hit spacebar and bring them up in succession. However, the cards are showing up with only one term blanked out. How do I fix this?

If you want all three words blanked, it would look like:
"The {{c1:og}} ran. {{c1::The}} cat sat. The car {{c1:rove}} over the bump.

The number in your cloze identifies which card it will be blanked out on. If you want three things blanked on the same card, they need the same number.

 

[mavric1298]

The only thing about that is they won't be in succession, they will all appear at once - just FYI

And the shortcut is command+control+alt(option)+C for them to be the same #, or without the alt/option to do the next (highlight what you want to cloze)

 

[mehc012]

The only thing about that is they won't be in succession, they will all appear at once - just FYI

And the shortcut is command+control+alt(option)+C for them to be the same #, or without the alt/option to do the next (highlight what you want to cloze)

I don't see what having them show up in succession would even mean. He wants them all blanked out from the beginning anyways, so...if you read the sentence, your eyes will encounter the blanks in succession.

 

[deleted647690]

If you want all three words blanked, it would look like:
"The {{c1:og}} ran. {{c1::The}} cat sat. The car {{c1:rove}} over the bump.

The number in your cloze identifies which card it will be blanked out on. If you want three things blanked on the same card, they need the same number.

I don't see what having them show up in succession would even mean. He wants them all blanked out from the beginning anyways, so...if you read the sentence, your eyes will encounter the blanks in succession.

Damn it. So I should go back and fix those.
Thank you for that, I won't make that mistake again.

I was trying to make it so that with each successive spacebar click, the next word would appear. So if it was "The c1[dog] c2[ran] c3[all] c4[over]", I thought it would work out like,
The [...] [...] [...] [...]
click spacebar
The dog [...][...][...]
click spacebar
The dog ran[...][...]
click spacebar
The dog ran all[...]
click again
The dog ran all over.


Is there a way to do this?


And so what did I do? Did using multiple numbers make multiple cards where a different word is blanked on each?

 

[mavric1298]

Exactly, it makes a new card for each number -- and I don't know of a way to do what you speak of - although it might just be that I don't know about it if there is!

However, I have to ask, why do you want it to act like that? It might not be the best technique anyway. Have you read the "20 rules" of formatting knowledge?

What you are describing is multiple discrete questions per card, which is exactly what you DONT want to do. The reason being, you want to know what pieces of info you are getting right, and which ones you are missing. If you have a whole bunch of info on one card, how will you ever know what parts of the card you know and which you don't. That is the whole reason for anki

 

[deleted647690]

Exactly, it makes a new card for each number -- and I don't know of a way to do what you speak of - although it might just be that I don't know about it if there is!

However, I have to ask, why do you want it to act like that? It might not be the best technique anyway. Have you read the "20 rules" of formatting knowledge?

What you are describing is multiple discrete questions per card, which is exactly what you DONT want to do. The reason being, you want to know what pieces of info you are getting right, and which ones you are missing. If you have a whole bunch of info on one card, how will you ever know what parts of the card you know and which you don't. That is the whole reason for anki

I thought it work out like, "Oh I didn't completely understand the concept described on this card, better redo it"

 

[mavric1298]

then you are spending time reviewing parts of the card you might know just because you missed one part of it. Keep your cards to one piece of info basically.

https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules

Ill-formulated knowledge - Complex and wordy

Q: What are the characteristics of the Dead Sea?
A: Salt lake located on the border between Israel and Jordan. Its shoreline is the lowest point on the Earth's surface, averaging 396 m below sea level. It is 74 km long. It is seven times as salty (30% by volume) as the ocean. Its density keeps swimmers afloat. Only simple organisms can live in its saline waters

Well-formulated knowledge - Simple and specific

Q: Where is the Dead Sea located?
A: on the border between Israel and Jordan

Q: What is the lowest point on the Earth's surface?
A: The Dead Sea shoreline

Q: What is the average level on which the Dead Sea is located?
A: 400 meters (below sea level)

Q: How long is the Dead Sea?
A: 70 km

Q: How much saltier is the Dead Sea than the oceans?
A: 7 times

Q: What is the volume content of salt in the Dead Sea?
A: 30%

Q: Why can the Dead Sea keep swimmers afloat?
A: due to high salt content

Q: Why is the Dead Sea called Dead?
A: because only simple organisms can live in it

Q: Why only simple organisms can live in the Dead Sea?
A: because of high salt content

 

[rebel87]

This is where I will hopefully go through Anki 1 feature at a time. For each I hope to include
Overview
My Recs
Questions

I am pretty busy, so I won't get through all of these today, but I will take any requests for 'next-up'.

Deck Organization:

Overview:
Decks, in Anki, are the only layer of organization which you can actually see. When you first open the program, you are immediately greeted by a list of individual 'Decks'. Some key points:
- Each Deck has its own New/Review card counts. This means that if your settings allow for 20 New cards and 50 Reviews each day, you could potentially have (20+50)*(total number of decks) cards to study every day.
- You have to review each deck separately. This isn't a functionality thing, I just hate having to click 8 buttons to do all of my reviews instead of just jumping into a mass of cards, so I try to minimize the number of decks I carry.
- Each Deck can have its own settings - this includes New and Review counts, but also things such as Ease, Interval, Maximum Interval, etc., which will be explored later.

Subdecks
This is worth its own blurb. The way Anki handles subdecks is, frankly, rather terrible. Say you have the following setup:
BIGdeck (50 due)
-SubdeckA (30 due)
-SubdeckB (30 due)
-SubdeckC (30 due)

The nice thing is that when you click on BIGdeck, you will study cards from all of the subdecks. It also caps the total number of reviews, helping with that multiplication issue I pointed out earlier. In the above example, each of your subdecks has 30 cards due. If you did all of them, that would be 90 reviews. However, if you simply do your BIGdeck, you will see 50 cards and then be done reviewing.
Unfortunately, if you try to do this just by clicking 'BIGdeck' and reviewing, you will be shown 30 cards from subdeckA, 20 cards from subdeckB, and none from subdeckC. This is pretty much my biggest issue with Deck organization in Anki.

My recommendation:
Keep 1 deck for each of the classes you are currently taking.
Keep 1 deck for your review subjects. When you finish a class, go through and tag it extensively - fix any inconsistencies or duplicate tags that have shown up throughout the semester. Then tag the entire deck with the name of the course, dump the cards into your Review deck, and delete that class's individual deck.
Keep 1 deck for side projects. For example, I have a Medical Spanish deck. When I get short on time, I just let this one build up and don't bother reviewing it at all.

When you start playing with Deck options, you can get fancy and make your Current Course decks have shorter intervals and more frequent reviews than your review deck, and keep a very short Max Interval for them, but that's a different subject.

Questions?

Deck Options - New Cards

Overview:
This is the real heart of the SRS: the timing of your card learning and reviewing.
To be honest, I can't add much here that isn't well spelled out in the online User Manual.
The gist of it is that there are 2 main types of cards: New cards and Review cards. When you open Deck Options, you will get to change a bunch of features which alter how frequently you see those two types of cards. I'll focus on New Cards, as that's really the part with the most immediately visible differences. First, New Cards are cards which you have never seen in Anki yet. Therefore, they are shown to you frequently until they 'graduate' to Review cards.

Steps: When you are first learning something, you tend to repeat the information frequently until it is drilled into your brain. Steps is Anki's adjustable version of doing just that. Ever practiced a speech or a musical passage and told yourself "OK, I am going to do this 5 times, but if I mess up even once, I have to start my count over." That's Steps. This setting allows you to pick how many times you have to get a card right before you 'know it'...and how long you have to wait in between each recall. By default, those are 1min and 10min. The first time you see a card, if you get it right, you will see it again in 10min. If you get it wrong, you start over again in 1min. (Note: if you select 'Easy' while reviewing it does something different. More on that later.) If you get it right after your 10min interval, it 'graduates' to become a Review card.

Graduating Interval: When your New card graduates, it has to have an interval assigned to it. By default, this is set at the next day.

Easy Interval: If at any time in this process you mark a learning card as 'Easy', it becomes a Review card with the interval specified here.

Starting Ease: This is an annoyingly named feature. It defaults to 250%, which essentially means that your interval will increase by 2.5x every time you mark a card 'correct'. This number changes depending on your review responses, as follows:
'Wrong' response: Ease decreases by 20 percentage points
'Hard' response: Ease decreases by 15 percentage points
'Good' response: Ease unchanged
'Easy' response: Ease increases by 15 percentage points

Thus, a card with 250% starting ease that you mark as correct 3x will increase its interval by 2.95x every time you get it right.

It is important (though a bit confusing) to differentiate this from the "Interval Modifier" you will see under the Review tab...this one affects how Anki calculates your intervals throughout the life of the card and relative to other cards. More details under 'Interval Modifier' in the 'Deck Options - Review Cards' section.

Those 4 are closely related, so I grouped them together even though Anki has some bizarre organization going on there. Order and New Cards/day are fairly self explanatory.

Bury Related New Cards until next day: This one is odd. Basically, if you use Notes with multiple cards, say, a Forward/Reverse (or a Cloze or custom template), the program will try to only show you ONE of those cards each day, so you don't spoil yourself. Sometimes this is useful. Sometimes, say, if you make a Note with a lot of information but no spoilers, it's simply annoying. Sometimes you have an exam the next day and spoilers be damned!

My recommendation:
I try to make all of my own cards, which makes frequent reviewing unnecessary, as I mostly learn by making, not by reviewing. Also, I tend to binge-make cards, so if I have to review each one after 10min, my learning session becomes hell. So Steps for all decks are short.
In practice 120min means that I can look at my new cards in the morning, then again either later that day or the next day.
Other universal setting: I always select
Show new cards in random order
because I see no reason to see anything in a fixed order. I like to minimize any cues for my cards other than the information itself. Personal preference.

Now, the rest of my settings vary by deck. I have 3 Deck Options groups: Current, Review, and SideProject.

Current Deck Options: High retention goal; I want to learn a lot of cards daily and see them frequently
Steps (in minutes): 1 120 I can look at my new cards in the morning, then again either later that day or the next day
New cards/day: 50 Depends on the course and my total schedule/load
Graduating: 2d
Easy: 5d
Starting ease: 250% Default; I don't change this for individual decks (that's for the Interval Modifier)
Bury related new cards: Yes Depends on subject matter; usually Yes unless I am using a card template where siblings are not spoilers

Review Deck Options: SRS goal; low load, long-term deck.
Steps (in minutes): 1 120 This never changes
New cards/day: 10 I keep the New cards/day low here...you may ask why I have any New cards at all in my Review deck. Turns out, as I said, I do a lot of binge-card making, so sometimes the cards I make for my final exam are still new after the class ends. Also, when class ends I like to sort through my cards and fix/remake any which are unclear or which are only useful for this class, without being generalizable. So I do have new cards in the Review deck, but I would prefer to focus on learning my CURRENT course's new cards.
Graduating: 3d 50% longer than Current!
Easy: 7d
Starting ease: 250%
Bury Related Cards: Absolutely.

For my SideProject deck I use the same settings as Review, but I allow more New cards...after all, I only make those when I have the free time!

Quick note: DO NOT make your total New/Review count (adding ALL of your decks) more than the minimum you are willing to do on your bad days. Also, Learning cards are not considered in either daily count, so keep that in mind...your Learning count will generally be at least as large as your New count, depending on your Learning Steps. If you have a lot of Current decks, consider dropping your Review deck counts to compensate!

Questions?

Deck Options - Review Cards

Maximum reviews/day: Self-explanatory. This should be at LEAST 2x your New card count. Reviews pile up quickly...if you do 50 New cards consistently, you will easily have a Due count of over 100/day after a week or so. You'll probably end up with even more, if you continue adding New cards every day. Don't worry, though...a few days off of adding New cards, or the occasional bolus of extra Reviews and you'll be caught up, with your srs none the worse for the wear! 2x is about right.
Note: Again, your total daily load should not be more than you will be willing to do on your worst day. It's easy to increase your count when you have the time/energy. However, skipping days is the worst thing you could do for Anki, and it's easy to skip a day entirely if the Due pile is too daunting.

Easy Bonus: This one seems a bit complex, but it's really fairly straightforward. When you mark a card easy, its interval increases by more than usual (more than its Ease). This is how much more.
Intervals for normal cards are calculated as (CurrentInterval*Ease*IntervalMod)
Easy cards are calculated as (CurrentInterval*Ease*IntervalMod*EasyBonus)
Assume an IntervalMod of 100% (we'll discuss what that is next), Ease 250%.
If your EasyBonus is 130%, then a card with an interval of 4d would be seen next in:
(4d*2.5*1) = 10d if you mark 'Good', but
(4d*2.5*1*1.3) = 13d if you mark 'Easy'!

Interval Modifier: This one is a bit complicated. Well, the implementation is straightforward: as I showed above, each interval is calculated as (CurrentInterval*Ease*IntervalMod), *EasyBonus if you mark it 'Easy'.

You'll note that the Interval modifier is, at default, 100%...so it does nothing. However, if you increase it, you will see cards less frequently (more spaced out, larger intervals) and if you decrease it, you'll see it more frequently (smaller intervals). Why would you do this? Well, say you have one topic you want to learn extremely thoroughly, or that you find generally harder, etc...you could decrease the IntervalMod to see it more. I use a smaller IntervalMod on my 'Current' deck options because I want to learn those cards very well.

Within a given deck, the effect of decreasing IntervalMod vs StartingEase is equivalent...so when to do which? Well, IntervalMod only affects cards that are currently in this deck, whereas StartingEase only affects cards learned in this deck, but has a permanent effect on the calculations of intervals throughout the lifetime of the card, no matter which deck you move it into. Once you learn a card, changing StartingEase in the deck options, or switching it to a lower-priority deck, will not get you back that extra 15% in interval calculations. So, generally, you should pick your Starting Ease based on what works for you overall (i.e. should probably be the same for all decks) and use IntervalMod to adjust individual decks for whatever specific goals you have.

One such goal is retention rate...Anki gives a formula in their manual which you can use to adjust the IntervalMod based on your current retention rate (how well you perform on mature cards) vs your desired goal retention rate. That is fine, though you'll probably get more bang for your buck if you make your Learning steps more robust or fine tune your deck to improve vague/shoddy cards.

Maximum Interval: Phew! Another self-explanatory one! Default for this is 100 years, but I like to bring it down to the 3-5yr range. Still experimenting with this. Note: set in days, which can be confusing.

My recommendations:

Current Deck Options: High retention goal; I want to learn a lot of cards daily and see them frequently
Maximum reviews/day: 100 This is 2x my New card count
Easy bonus: 130% This is standard, I wouldn't decrease it, and I didn't increase it for my high-retention priority decks
Interval Modifier: 85% I emphasize retention in these decks...an IM<100% means more frequent reviews
Maximum Interval: 1500 100yrs seemed insane to me...this is about 3.5-4yrs, guesstimation-style

Review Deck Options: SRS goal; low load, long-term deck.
Maximum reviews/day: 85-100 (depending on how busy the rest of my life is) In this deck, I used my average cards/min from the stats window to give myself a short daily session.
Easy bonus: 130% This is standard, I may consider increasing it
Interval Modifier: 100% Once a card gets moved to my Review deck, its intervals grow normally. I may actually increase this because my retention is so good, but the reviews are not a burden currently, so no need.
Maximum Interval: 1500 100yrs seemed insane to me...this is about 3.5-4yrs, guesstimation-style

Questions?

Deck Options - Lapses

Overview:
Anytime you Lapse a card - aka miss a Review card - it is an indication that you need to relearn the information, and that your previous interval was too long. The Lapse settings are where you fine-tune this process.

Steps (in minutes): Much like the original learning steps, these are your Relearning steps.

New Interval: Once you relearn the card, you probably don't want or need to restart back with the standard graduating interval. After all, you remembered the information for the previous interval, and you *just* relearned it! This setting is how much you decrease the interval from its prior value after forgetting and relearning it. It's basically like the opposite of the Easy Bonus. The interval for a relearned card will be
(CurrentInterval*NewInterval) (I'm not sure about Interval Modifier here).

Minimum Interval: It would suck to end up with a few hours interval because you missed a card after 3d, wouldn't it? This setting prevents such things.

Leech Threshold: A 'Leech' is a card that you've missed too many times. How many is too many? That's what the Leech Threshold lets you decide!

Leech Action: A leech is probably a badly made card - something vague, for example - so Anki takes some sort of action (the 'Leech action') to notify you of this...it can either flag it as a leech, or it can flag it and suspend it; seeing the card repeatedly clearly isn't helping you anyway, so why bother? The tag allows you to go through every once and a while and fix/purge any cards in your deck that just aren't working for you.

My recommendations:

Current Deck Options: High retention goal; I want to learn a lot of cards daily and see them frequently
Steps (in minutes): 1 120 Relearning steps same as my Learning steps...after all, I DID learn it at one point
New Interval: 30% The standard Ease is 250%, or a 2.5x increase for each interval. 1/2.5 is 0.4, which to me should be the ballpark for the standard 'New Interval' (ballpark because a lot of other factors alter your prior interval)...after all, you got it right the interval before, right? Since this is my high-retention-goal deck, I want to see Lapsed cards even more frequently than that!
Leech Threshold: 8 Standard
Leech Action: Tag only I'm lazy...trust me, I'm far more likely to edit a card if it keeps popping up in review than if I suspend it.

Review Deck Options: SRS goal; low load, long-term deck.
Steps (in minutes): 1 120 Relearning steps same as my Learning steps...after all, I DID learn it at one point
New Interval: 40% The standard Ease is 250%, or a 2.5x increase for each interval. 1/2.5 is 0.4, which to me should be the ballpark for the standard 'New Interval' (ballpark because a lot of other factors alter your prior interval)...after all, you got it right the interval before, right?
Leech Threshold: 8 Standard
Leech Action: Tag only I'm lazy...trust me, I'm far more likely to edit a card if it keeps popping up in review than if I suspend it.

Questions?

Custom Study - Increase New/Review Card Limit, Unbury
Overview:
Custom Study tools can be accessed from the main page of an individual deck (the one with New and Review counts that shows up when you click on the Deck's name from the home page). At the bottom of the deck's main page, you will see a button that says Custom Study.
This will bring up a menu that will allow you to study the cards in your deck in a variety of different ways, depending on the requirements of your current study session.

In this section, I will cover the options which change the cards you see directly in your current deck. My next section will cover the options for creating a separate Custom Study deck for either extra review (including cramming) or reviewing ahead.

Increase New/Review Count: Yes, I know these are listed as two separate features, but really...these are pretty self explanatory. I have recommended, multiple times, that you set your New/Review counts to equal the number you would be able to do on your worst day. Hopefully, every day is not your worst day, and you have the time/mental fortitude remaining to tackle even more cards! This is how you do that.
When you select this in the Custom Study menu, it will show you how many of that card type remains in your deck. You can then choose how much you want to increase your limit by. It's that simple!
Note: I haven't found a way to decrease this limit once I bump it up, so if you're unsure about how many you can get through today, do it in batches!

Unbury: This isn't really a Custom Study feature, but it comes up often when people are trying to review, so I'll include it here.
Remember when we discussed the "Bury related cards" feature? Well, what happens when you are trying to work through your review backlog and Anki keeps hiding those siblings from you even though you no longer want it to? You hit Unbury! This button is found next to the Custom Study button, at the bottom of a deck's main page. Use with discretion...you buried siblings for a reason!

My recommendations:
I like to increase my Review limit first, if there are any backlogged Due cards. Once (if) I work through all of those, then I consider taking on additional New cards. Remember, New cards have multiple Learning steps, so keep that in mind when budgeting your time!

I usually don't unbury, unless I'm coming up on an exam and want to make sure I see everything pending before I start Cramming!

Upcoming Feature Explanations:

Custom Study - Study By... and Deck Options

Browser: Search Functions

Browser: Moving/Rescheduling/(De)Tagging Cards

Tagging: Tips and Suggestions

Hey have you done the Custom Study section, I didn't find it.

Also, I want to know what lenght of time do you consider for long-term deck(Review deck) and Current Deck(High-Retention)? I have 4.5 months to do my step 1 and I review some anki cards I made some months ago, however I missed some days and know I don't really know how to approach the issue of having a great amount of cards for reviewing? Do you have any recomendation?

Regards,

PD: Do you have any recommendation how to study brosencephalon deck?

 

[pioneer22]

this may sound silly, but isn't anki the exact same thing as Quizlet, basically??

 

[TexasSurgeon]

this may sound silly, but isn't anki the exact same thing as Quizlet, basically??

No because it uses spaced repetition to actually test what you're not good at and make you better at it, provided you use it every day

 

[podankle]

Is anyone having issues exporting quizlet cards to anki?

 

[VitaminVater]

Can anyone comment on using Brosencephalon's deck and settings?

I was thinking of using chronicidal's settings or that of mehc012 but then I saw this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/4zj3jw/bros_anki_deck_comprehensive_guide/

Thoughts?

 

[χmaverickχ]

Somehow, someway I screwed up the "basic" Anki card setting. Anyone know how to revert to the default "basic" note setting?

EDIT: figured it out. When selecting card types from a deck you can select the type tab, then click manage, then click add, and you can add whatever note type you like directly from Anki. Copy/paste the formatting of the downloaded note to make your note in question revert back to the default settings

Putting this out there in case anyone else runs into the same problem

I think the only people that may encounter such an issue like this is those of you that like to edit the "cards" tab to fancify your notes, which can in turn edit all of a given note type in your decks

 

[natg101]

deleted

 

[Kevinsong]

Does anyone know how to adjust the review interval in anki card? Some of my cards has 1 min, 15 days, and 3.5 months... but, I like to have the interval to be 10 min, 1 day, and 10 days.... How do I change the setting. Easy instruction will be very appreciated since I am very new in using anki

 

[mehc012]

Does anyone know how to adjust the review interval in anki card? Some of my cards has 1 min, 15 days, and 3.5 months... but, I like to have the interval to be 10 min, 1 day, and 10 days.... How do I change the setting. Easy instruction will be very appreciated since I am very new in using anki

Deck Options → Review

But to be honest, this sounds like a card you've been studying and have gotten right a bunch. They're going to increase the interval to large numbers; that's the whole point of spaced repetition. I'd recommend giving it a whirl.

 

[BlastedHeath]

Has anyone ever had problems with new cards not showing up in order? I imported a premade deck yesterday, I have the option "show new cards in order added" selected, but it is showing me cards in a random order(added on different days according to the browser). My other decks seem to go in the correct order.

 

[DoctorSwagger]

I have a deck that I haven't touched in months, can I reset what is due?


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[Kevinsong]

Deck Options → Review

But to be honest, this sounds like a card you've been studying and have gotten right a bunch. They're going to increase the interval to large numbers; that's the whole point of spaced repetition. I'd recommend giving it a whirl.

Do you mean the deck will increase the review interval as i study more and more? How can I control that so the review interval doesn't increase?

 

[mehc012]

Do you mean the deck will increase the review interval as i study more and more? How can I control that so the review interval doesn't increase?

Why would you want to? That is literally the entire purpose of spaced repetition. It increases the interval gradually so that you are never reviewing cards more often than you need to for long-term retention.

You can artificially set the max interval really low, but you'd be hobbling the entire process and defeating the purpose. If you want to go through something a bunch of times before the test, just make a cram deck.

 

[mavric1298]

Do you mean the deck will increase the review interval as i study more and more? How can I control that so the review interval doesn't increase?

Not the deck, but the card. That's the whole point of Anki. If you don't want this, go get a basic flash card app instead.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[deleted647690]

So I have a big mcat deck with ~5000 poorly made cards which have tags for each of the mcat subjects. I just want to study the bio/biochem ones, because those are probably the most effective for me to study at this point. When I make a custom deck and just indicate those cards tagged "bio""biochem"/etc, I find I can't change settings for how many new cards I see a day/etc.

Is there a way to move all of those tagged cards out of my MCAT deck and into their own separate deck where I can adjust their settings?

 

[mehc012]

So I have a big mcat deck with ~5000 poorly made cards which have tags for each of the mcat subjects. I just want to study the bio/biochem ones, because those are probably the most effective for me to study at this point. When I make a custom deck and just indicate those cards tagged "bio""biochem"/etc, I find I can't change settings for how many new cards I see a day/etc.

Is there a way to move all of those tagged cards out of my MCAT deck and into their own separate deck where I can adjust their settings?

1. Go into the browser. Search "tag:bio or tag:biochem" or whatever your ideal search parameters are.
a. If you can't figure out the proper syntax on the search, make the Custom Study deck as you did above, selecting the tags you want, and then go into its Options and copy the search criteria in the first box in that menu, and paste into the browser.
b. If it's easier, you could also just make a Custom Study deck with 9999 cards, using the tags and settings you want, and then open the Browser from that deck window and view only cards in that custom study deck, then continue.

2. Select all (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A on a Mac)

3. Choose the 'Change Deck' button at the top of the Browser.

4. Either select a deck or make a new one, using the Change Deck window that will pop up.

 

[deleted647690]

1. Go into the browser. Search "tag:bio or tag:biochem" or whatever your ideal search parameters are.
a. If you can't figure out the proper syntax on the search, make the Custom Study deck as you did above, selecting the tags you want, and then go into its Options and copy the search criteria in the first box in that menu, and paste into the browser.
b. If it's easier, you could also just make a Custom Study deck with 9999 cards, using the tags and settings you want, and then open the Browser from that deck window and view only cards in that custom study deck, then continue.

2. Select all (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A on a Mac)

3. Choose the 'Change Deck' button at the top of the Browser.

4. Either select a deck or make a new one, using the Change Deck window that will pop up.

Thanks!

 

[ElephasMaximus6]

I really wish I had found this thread earlier! I stumbled upon Anki some time ago and started using it by making individual decks for each big topic we had, each consisting of 300-500 cards. However, I now have an exam coming up consisting of many different modules, so I'm wondering what would be the best way to revise for it.
Would it be detrimental to make one huge deck with all the smaller decks, and if I did would I be able to review everything several times effectively? Or, is there a way I can change my settings for this?
Basically, I think I'm a bit lost, could someone please help me?

 

[mehc012]

I really wish I had found this thread earlier! I stumbled upon Anki some time ago and started using it by making individual decks for each big topic we had, each consisting of 300-500 cards. However, I now have an exam coming up consisting of many different modules, so I'm wondering what would be the best way to revise for it.
Would it be detrimental to make one huge deck with all the smaller decks, and if I did would I be able to review everything several times effectively? Or, is there a way I can change my settings for this?
Basically, I think I'm a bit lost, could someone please help me?

Not detrimental at all - just tag each deck before you merge them all, so that you can still sort them out if you feel the need to. (Open each deck in the Browser, select all, and 'Add Tag'...then hit 'Change Deck')

 

[ElephasMaximus6]

Not detrimental at all - just tag each deck before you merge them all, so that you can still sort them out if you feel the need to. (Open each deck in the Browser, select all, and 'Add Tag'...then hit 'Change Deck')

Thank you so much!!! I now know to make better decks for next year
Since I'm now at the stage of just keeping all this info in my brain for the exam by reviewing it repeatedly, how can I change my settings for the deck so that I see all the cards? Or would it be better to use a custom study deck? I've got some time off before the exam luckily, so I'l be doing all-dayers!
Thanks

 

[mehc012]

Thank you so much!!! I now know to make better decks for next year
Since I'm now at the stage of just keeping all this info in my brain for the exam by reviewing it repeatedly, how can I change my settings for the deck so that I see all the cards? Or would it be better to use a custom study deck? I've got some time off before the exam luckily, so I'l be doing all-dayers!
Thanks

Custom study deck would be the way to go! Let your deck settings stay the way that works best for managing your LONG term retention, and use Custom Study for when you have a short-term goal.