Firecracker

[JackShephard MD]

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med.firecracker.me

New medical education website rooted in an adaptive learning platform. Looks impressive, check it out.

Cheers.

 

[Ophthoseidon]

@theKeithF

Would it be possible to get those analytical/descriptive features back (Like How long it took to answer your questions/How many cards you've answered etc/And possibly a marker that shows you how many times you've seen a card (say you've seen a card 10 times and every time you rate it a 1- by showing that statistic it would help you to realize you probably need to relearn it etc)

Total card count would also be awesome. Granted, if he's just mentioning this stuff now to the team, most likely it won't be implemented in time for current M2s

 

[theKeithF]

@theKeithF

Would it be possible to get those analytical/descriptive features back (Like How long it took to answer your questions/How many cards you've answered etc/And possibly a marker that shows you how many times you've seen a card (say you've seen a card 10 times and every time you rate it a 1- by showing that statistic it would help you to realize you probably need to relearn it etc)

Can you guys put together a list of the analytics you'd like to see (in order of importance would be great)? It's absolutely possible for us to get these in soon enough for you guys to get value out of them, but it would be helpful if you could give me a better idea of exactly what you'd like to see.

 

[Ophthoseidon]

Can you guys put together a list of the analytics you'd like to see (in order of importance would be great)? It's absolutely possible for us to get these in soon enough for you guys to get value out of them, but it would be helpful if you could give me a better idea of exactly what you'd like to see.

I think the biggest ones for me are total cards and % mastery

 

[Member4545]

Hey guys! I'm currently a M1 (in my 2nd semester) and I'm getting ready to start FC tomorrow. But I'm kind of confused about how to start. I actually signed up at the very beginning of med school but haven't really been able to start. That being said I have gone through and flagged all the topics that have been covered in my courses thus far (basic sciences, immuno, and some of GI). Should I not have flagged all of these? And if I am supposed to flag them, are they considered "past" since I'm no longer on those topics (I'm hesitant to do this because I remember very little from the topics so I feel like I need to review them/re-learn them)... Any experienced FCer willing to steer me in the right direction (I'm kinda intimidated about starting 😕)? I appreciate you in advance! (@theKeithF I would love your advice too!)

 

[Elevencents]

Yeah you were right to flag everything you've covered. It's important to not get behind, especially when starting late. Now just flag stuff as you cover it in class. Dont overthink it.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app

 

[Ophthoseidon]

Hey guys! I'm currently a M1 (in my 2nd semester) and I'm getting ready to start FC tomorrow. But I'm kind of confused about how to start. I actually signed up at the very beginning of med school but haven't really been able to start. That being said I have gone through and flagged all the topics that have been covered in my courses thus far (basic sciences, immuno, and some of GI). Should I not have flagged all of these? And if I am supposed to flag them, are they considered "past" since I'm no longer on those topics (I'm hesitant to do this because I remember very little from the topics so I feel like I need to review them/re-learn them)... Any experienced FCer willing to steer me in the right direction (I'm kinda intimidated about starting 😕)? I appreciate you in advance! (@theKeithF I would love your advice too!)

I would not have flagged all of them at once, but that's me. If you put them as past, you'll never see them and presumably there are already 1000's of questions.

 

[Member4545]

@Ophthoseidon how would you go about flagging instead?

 

[Ophthoseidon]

@Ophthoseidon how would you go about flagging instead?

If it were me I'd flag the current topics you're doing in class per usual, but in addition I'd flag 2-4 old topics per day but keep it "current". That way you still see that stuff. I realize other people would have different methods though. Plus you'll get the summer to catch up/get ahead, but I think for spaced repetition to work you have to have the repetition part. If you flag everything as past and you only see 50 past questions per day and have 1000's of cards to get through, you're not repeating those cards. Just my $.02

 

[abolt18]

If it were me I'd flag the current topics you're doing in class per usual, but in addition I'd flag 2-4 old topics per day but keep it "current". That way you still see that stuff. I realize other people would have different methods though. Plus you'll get the summer to catch up/get ahead, but I think for spaced repetition to work you have to have the repetition part. If you flag everything as past and you only see 50 past questions per day and have 1000's of cards to get through, you're not repeating those cards. Just my $.02

I'd second this.

 

[Brorthopedic]

Hey guys,

I am actually planning on starting Firecracker this upcoming M1-M2 summer. Is it possible to cover M1 material over a 6 week period (that's how long my summer is) to catch up before M2 classes start? If so, how would I go about doing it?

 

[Member4545]

If it were me I'd flag the current topics you're doing in class per usual, but in addition I'd flag 2-4 old topics per day but keep it "current". That way you still see that stuff. I realize other people would have different methods though. Plus you'll get the summer to catch up/get ahead, but I think for spaced repetition to work you have to have the repetition part. If you flag everything as past and you only see 50 past questions per day and have 1000's of cards to get through, you're not repeating those cards. Just my $.02

Yes, this makes so much more sense than my approach! Thank you for your input! 🙂 When I tag old topics what level of topic do you suggest I use (for example, all of Anatomy vs Anatomy::Abdomen)?

 

[justAstudent]

With dedicated studying time right around the corner, what is the general consensus as to whether or not to continue using firecracker during those 4-6 weeks?

 

[abolt18]

With dedicated studying time right around the corner, what is the general consensus as to whether or not to continue using firecracker during those 4-6 weeks?

Totally up to you. I felt at that point it was inefficient for me to do it. Instead I went through all my 1's, then all my 2's, and many of my 3's. Figured it was best to target my study at my weaknesses.

 

[Ophthoseidon]

With dedicated studying time right around the corner, what is the general consensus as to whether or not to continue using firecracker during those 4-6 weeks?

I'm still going to use it but may switch to work on my low numbers as abolt said. If we still had the never see this again button I'd probably continue as normal, but I don't need to see which roots feed the median nerve during dedicated.

 

[Ophthoseidon]

Yes, this makes so much more sense than my approach! Thank you for your input! 🙂 When I tag old topics what level of topic do you suggest I use (for example, all of Anatomy vs Anatomy::Abdomen)?

3-4 topics, the smallest level. i.e. lower leg musculature, transcription, williams syndrome, microarrays, etc.

 

[Ophthoseidon]

Hey guys,

I am actually planning on starting Firecracker this upcoming M1-M2 summer. Is it possible to cover M1 material over a 6 week period (that's how long my summer is) to catch up before M2 classes start? If so, how would I go about doing it?

Theoretically if you do 10%/week but you may hate your life and your retention will probably not be optimal. 10%/week will be about 200 questions per day. In order to retain those 200 questions per day you'll have to double that in review, so I'd say at least 600 questions/day if you want to have decent retention. It also depends how much you remember from classes.

 

[EmpathMan]

Hey fellow FC users - I've used FC since my M1 year and am entering my dedicated study period at the end of this month. I've finally cracked open First Aid and note that there are quite a few concepts that are in FC, but not in FA. And from doing Pathoma and UWorld, I see that FC is pooling stuff from there. So will just reading FA during my dedicated study period actually be helpful if FC has more conglomerate information?

 

[FA5297]

Hola everyone,

Love this thread. Has been a mainstay of my medical school career. I'm an M2, testing in June. I'm averaging about 250 questions/day - which is a lot, as newly flagged material takes me twice as long to learn/ think through/ read the card. I'm also still on legacy. Have 8,400 topics flagged. No embryo flagged, 1/3 micro flagged, and like 10 cards anatomy flagged. Our school grades. Assuming I work it and can get through another 3,000 topics before mid-June, what should be my priorities? I'm kind of assuming the organ systems, but am interested in any advice.

Am also trying to do 2 rounds through UWorld, but as I'm doing my first go through along with class and FC, I find it going incredibly slow- but I'm also taking notes on every question (right or wrong).

What are your thoughts on this? Already feeling the Bern-out.

[Edit]- Going thru pathoma and flagging along with it (I also take hand notes on pathoma and FC cards). Only read the school's coursepack a couple days before our exams.

 

[Daitong]

Hi,

I was wondering if you guys would recommend flagging some of the Step 2 info? I think some of their cards are done a bit better, and only flagging for non-overlapping but relevant topics; for example, hypo/hyperkalemia/natremia (any ion disorder) is covered well in the Step 2 cards, but barely touched on in the Step 1 cards.

Esp with Step 1 being more and more with a clinical slant, what is your recommendation? I don’t want to get too overwhelmed ofc, but I want to cover all my bases.

 

[nabilesmail]

Can you guys put together a list of the analytics you'd like to see (in order of importance would be great)? It's absolutely possible for us to get these in soon enough for you guys to get value out of them, but it would be helpful if you could give me a better idea of exactly what you'd like to see.

-Average time/Question (Under the Pause section or at the end of the task?, perhaps this could twofold, 1. Per session 2. Average all time)

-Total time it took to complete Task (Cool metric to see and understand what our FC time commitment is)

-#Total Cards Answered (Kind of for funsies)

-#of times Card Answered (shows up after answering it)- If I keep rating a card 1-2, and have done so 10 times, then I'm wasting my time seeing the card in an isolated context, I likely need to spend some time reviewing the whole topic, and this would be a great indication for that, as well as boost up the efficiency of the program.

-Rating of Card Last time it was answered + Days since last answer - Would be really cool, it helps us to understand whether something truly is apart of our long-term memory or not (Lets say I rated a Card a 3-4, saw it again one month later, and was able to recall it perfectly, then it really does deserve a "4-5", versus a card that had a "4-5" rating previously, say 3 weeks ago, but was not recalled perfectly. It'll make the rating process a bit more structured.

Another really important suggestion (IMO): Could we please switch Multiple Choice question answering to the "1,2,3,4,5" system without Shift, or make "a,b,c,d,e" a single hotkey(1,2,3,4,5 is better, less keyboard movement), this could really up the time efficiency, it really slows us (me?) down when these questions come up, just the mechanical aspect of it slows rapid answering.

Thanks as always! I know these can sound like little things, but with how much new material we have to learn per day, completing our daily firecracker tasks with as much efficiency as possible (in terms of time) is crucial. Sometimes, I simply ignore FC (especially days before a test) because I don't have 3 hours to spend looking at old material, but ideally, I'd like to not skip any days, and shortening the time helps me to balance that. Also, metrics help us to analyze and improve our experience and add on to the efficiency.

 

[Dr Nicholas Riviera]

@Daitong @Ophthoseidon @theKeithF
huge thanks for all you guys/gals/whatevers that post in this thread. i start MC1 this fall and reading this thread today has been beyond insightful. already got services bookmarked and ready for purchase come august. i'll enjoy my summer until then, but once again, you all are doing a great service to us incoming students through your advice and discussions. it's greatly appreciated!

 

[Ophthoseidon]

@Daitong @Ophthoseidon @theKeithF
huge thanks for all you guys/gals/whatevers that post in this thread. i start MC1 this fall and reading this thread today has been beyond insightful. already got services bookmarked and ready for purchase come august. i'll enjoy my summer until then, but once again, you all are doing a great service to us incoming students through your advice and discussions. it's greatly appreciated!

I appreciate it, and may it serve you well! I can't believe you're waiting until August! You'll never get a 250!

Jk go outside and have fun 🙂

 

[Elevencents]

Hola everyone,

Love this thread. Has been a mainstay of my medical school career. I'm an M2, testing in June. I'm averaging about 250 questions/day - which is a lot, as newly flagged material takes me twice as long to learn/ think through/ read the card. I'm also still on legacy. Have 8,400 topics flagged. No embryo flagged, 1/3 micro flagged, and like 10 cards anatomy flagged. Our school grades. Assuming I work it and can get through another 3,000 topics before mid-June, what should be my priorities? I'm kind of assuming the organ systems, but am interested in any advice.

Am also trying to do 2 rounds through UWorld, but as I'm doing my first go through along with class and FC, I find it going incredibly slow- but I'm also taking notes on every question (right or wrong).

What are your thoughts on this? Already feeling the Bern-out.

[Edit]- Going thru pathoma and flagging along with it (I also take hand notes on pathoma and FC cards). Only read the school's coursepack a couple days before our exams.

N=1 but I would drop FC for dedicated - optimally a couple months out from dedicated. It has served its purpose and now you need to focus on FA and QBanks. Especially when it starts to become a chore.

 

[nabilesmail]

How do you guys keep up with Pathoma+ First Aid + FC content material (often all 3 have information that the others don't have)/What is your guys order of learning new material? (in particular, Path)

 

[FA5297]

How do you guys keep up with Pathoma+ First Aid + FC content material (often all 3 have information that the others don't have)/What is your guys order of learning new material? (in particular, Path)

Learning goes like this for me:
1) Pick up coursepack and skim its chapter names
2) Watch a section or two in Pathoma, then re-write it in note form
3) Look at Pathoma topics in FC, taking notes in different colored pen onto same notebook where it adds info
4) Flag topic in FC and do them every day until unit exam
5) Repeat until all FC units flagged and pathoma rewritten
6) Read coursepack night before exam. Annotate anything worthwhile into same notebook.

Also doing uworld questions with a separate notebook, where I take notes on every question, starring questions that I get wrong or don't know. I'll then go flag them in FC if I haven't done so already.

Will read First Aid during dedicated, but to be honest, the book puts me to sleep.

 

[Ophthoseidon]

What are peoples opinions on dropping firecracker for dedicated? I feel like Im starting to get firecracker burnout . In addition to 60% of the things I see daily being things I have down pat, I feel like I could be placing my time elsewhere. The only other thing I can think of is just doing 1's and 2's, or unflagging everything and only flagging topics that I know I suck at or am getting questions wrong on. thoughts?

 

[abolt18]

What are peoples opinions on dropping firecracker for dedicated? I feel like Im starting to get firecracker burnout . In addition to 60% of the things I see daily being things I have down pat, I feel like I could be placing my time elsewhere. The only other thing I can think of is just doing 1's and 2's, or unflagging everything and only flagging topics that I know I suck at or am getting questions wrong on. thoughts?

I think 1's and 2's (maybe 3's) would be a far better use of your time at this point.

 

[nabilesmail]

I think 1's and 2's (maybe 3's) would be a far better use of your time at this point.

I've now switched to RX Flash Facts, its First Aid 2016 word for word (every page is even uploaded) in a FC form. Similar setup of flagging topics too. I love FA 2016, and while people always say "just know FA+UWORLD+PAthoma), I don't think people realize how dense FA 2016 really is, Flash facts has like 11000-12000 cards of pure First Aid, point being that I don't think its worth the random extra content until you can get those down first. I like FC, but too many kinks to workout right now, and as we get closer to dedicated, I think its safer to make sure we get the First Aid info down cold. Its kind of sad to switch over since I've been with FC since Spring M1, but FC volume is diluting down my understanding of subjects. I wish there was a way to flag in individual cards within a topic so that i could prioritize things said in FA/Pathoma first and then add in the extra stuff as time permits, but right now, I try to memorize it all and it doesn't work out. I also like the questions in Flash Facts more, way more direct and "fast". You can hammer questions out much very quickly.

 

[CyberMaxx]

What are peoples opinions on dropping firecracker for dedicated? I feel like Im starting to get firecracker burnout . In addition to 60% of the things I see daily being things I have down pat, I feel like I could be placing my time elsewhere. The only other thing I can think of is just doing 1's and 2's, or unflagging everything and only flagging topics that I know I suck at or am getting questions wrong on. thoughts?

At this point I think I'm going to stick with it during dedicated. But I am also pretty far behind you in terms of flagging and by the sounds of it mastery. If you don't mind me asking, what is your mastery around these days?

 

[Ophthoseidon]

At this point I think I'm going to stick with it during dedicated. But I am also pretty far behind you in terms of flagging and by the sounds of it mastery. If you don't mind me asking, what is your mastery around these days?

Not great. I am more liberal with my ratings. I'd say about 70-75%?

 

[CyberMaxx]

Not great. I am more liberal with my ratings. I'd say about 70-75%?

Still beating me 😛, I'm hanging out in the mid 60s. My goal is to get to at least in the 80s by test day, ideally 90% and 100,000 total reviews. 🙄

 

[justAstudent]

Dedicated for me is in about 3 weeks time and I'm sitting at 80% flagged 🙁

 

[CyberMaxx]

Dedicated for me is in about 3 weeks time and I'm sitting at 80% flagged 🙁

Hey, I understand wanting to be farther with flagging than you are, but if you look at Fc's data I think you are still on track to kill it. Assuming you didn't flag another topic between now and Step 1, their data shows that the average score for your amount flagged is approaching the 250s. I say keep flagging and doing reviews and you're going to be in a great place to do really well in a couple of months. 🙂

It might be worth dedicating a few days to mass flagging so that you can get pass the flagging phase and have 1-2 months of straight review.

 

[eggman2013]

Hey, I understand wanting to be farther with flagging than you are, but if you look at Fc's data I think you are still on track to kill it. Assuming you didn't flag another topic between now and Step 1, their data shows that the average score for your amount flagged is approaching the 250s. I say keep flagging and doing reviews and you're going to be in a great place to do really well in a couple of months. 🙂

It might be worth dedicating a few days to mass flagging so that you can get pass the flagging phase and have 1-2 months of straight review.

View attachment 201807

Hey there. Out of curiosity, where did you find these charts?

 

[CyberMaxx]

Hey there. Out of curiosity, where did you find these charts?

From this post here http://blog.firecracker.me/students/firecracker-step-1-and-comlex-performance-analysis

So how is everyone using the snooze feature? I tried to use it like anki (snooze every question I get wrong) but think it just takes too long if you do it like that. I think at this point I'm just going to use it when I get something wrong and feel like I've never seen it before, and when I need to memorize lists of things.

 

[polylux]

From this post here http://blog.firecracker.me/students/firecracker-step-1-and-comlex-performance-analysis

So how is everyone using the snooze feature? I tried to use it like anki (snooze every question I get wrong) but think it just takes too long if you do it like that. I think at this point I'm just going to use it when I get something wrong and feel like I've never seen it before, and when I need to memorize lists of things.

I really only do it for the really short questions that if I just see again, I could memorize. I don't bother with the giant lists b/c I'd need to snooze like 3x to get the entire thing anyways.

 

[ForHumors]

I'm curious about Firecracker's new qbank now available. M2s who have dabbled in it, what do you think of its quality? I'm an M1 looking to use a qbank during my summer, deciding between Firecracker's and Kaplan's (which is also new apparently). I'm hoping to use USMLErx during second year and Uworld during dedicated.
Already a firecracker user (just hit 26% reviewed) so it would be nice to not have to pay for kaplan. Also a fan of being able to review related cards for missed questions. Thoughts?

 

[Ophthoseidon]

I'm curious about Firecracker's new qbank now available. M2s who have dabbled in it, what do you think of its quality? I'm an M1 looking to use a qbank during my summer, deciding between Firecracker's and Kaplan's (which is also new apparently). I'm hoping to use USMLErx during second year and Uworld during dedicated.
Already a firecracker user (just hit 26% reviewed) so it would be nice to not have to pay for kaplan. Also a fan of being able to review related cards for missed questions. Thoughts?

I'd probably focus on flagging instead of qbanks if you're only 26% flagged. The quality is fine. They are very long winded, expanded questions but other than that they aren't bad

 

[kurite]

Hello! MS1 in spring semester. Just started FC and im a bit confused by it. It asks how well i knew the info after each question, and obviously i mark it by how well i knew it but how long until I see that card again if I marked it as a 1 for instance? Additionally there is plenty of material on each card that I want to learn and then review later. Is there anyway to do this or do you just wait for the cards to cycle back?

 

[Ophthoseidon]

Hello! MS1 in spring semester. Just started FC and im a bit confused by it. It asks how well i knew the info after each question, and obviously i mark it by how well i knew it but how long until I see that card again if I marked it as a 1 for instance? Additionally there is plenty of material on each card that I want to learn and then review later. Is there anyway to do this or do you just wait for the cards to cycle back?

Depends on how your settings are set up, how many times you've seen the card before, and what you've previously rated a card. Also depends on how many other cards you have in your high priority stack. There are a lot of factors that go into the algorithm. In terms of reviewing, you can do directly to that subject section in study something specific to see the information presented on that topic.

 

[kurite]

Thank you for the reply! I just started working on firecracker today and im a bit freaked, it took me 2.5 hours to get through 175 cards, is that slow? How does everyone go about studying them? Do you just look at the answer and move on or do you sit and memorize it for a minute, do you click on additional info and learn all of that too? Did must people start out not knowing the answers to 60% of the cards?

 

[Ophthoseidon]

You should be doing at LEAST 120/hour. That's 2/minute. Firecracker recommends 3-5/minute, which is ridiculous. Don't read the extra information unless you don't remember that. They'll be in card form also.

 

[polylux]

If you're having trouble getting through them fast, you can set yourself a repeating 30 second timer. Don't spend more than 30 s per card. You can make it 20 s if you want. Eventually, you'll train yourself to go fast. I actually managed to do like 450 cards yesterday in about 3 hours.

When I first start going through material, I don't know most of it. But it's okay, because the ratio of green to red will get better and better as you repeat the cards. Don't worry and trust in the process.

 

[Espadaleader]

Has anyone talked about Firecracker for the Shelf exams? There are NBME-style questions with Firecracker now even for Step 2 - even with the same interface (similar) as Step 2/Step 1 etc. Has anyone done Firecracker vs. UWorld etc. (replace/supplant etc.)?

If this has been talked about before in detail please direct me.

Thanks!

 

[dempty]

Hey, I understand wanting to be farther with flagging than you are, but if you look at Fc's data I think you are still on track to kill it. Assuming you didn't flag another topic between now and Step 1, their data shows that the average score for your amount flagged is approaching the 250s. I say keep flagging and doing reviews and you're going to be in a great place to do really well in a couple of months. 🙂

It might be worth dedicating a few days to mass flagging so that you can get pass the flagging phase and have 1-2 months of straight review.

View attachment 201807

From this post here http://blog.firecracker.me/students/firecracker-step-1-and-comlex-performance-analysis

So how is everyone using the snooze feature? I tried to use it like anki (snooze every question I get wrong) but think it just takes too long if you do it like that. I think at this point I'm just going to use it when I get something wrong and feel like I've never seen it before, and when I need to memorize lists of things.

Some things to note with these-- first, the guy appears to have analyzed the data using a few different regressions, each with only one variable, so you don't have nearly as good of a picture as you would have by including the other variables in the model (although, he might have used a model with all 3 independent variables in it, it just doesn't look like it from the presentation). This is important because the current influence of each variable isn't likely to be accurately estimated-- one variable may be more important than it currently appear or one might actually be pretty useless-- but we won't see this without the proper modeling. Second, The correlations are all relatively weak-barely moderate, and the R-squared values of those regressions would be even lower. In other words, the "# of recalls" variable accounts for about 13% of the sample variation (literally, square r = 0.357 to get ~0.13) observed in the STEP 1 scores, which means that there are a lot of other influences on your STEP 1 score (we have about 87% of variation unaccounted for by # of recalls). Lastly, you'll want to look at the prediction interval limits, rather than the confidence interval limits. In this regression context, prediction intervals are for one, single observation (i.e. the [hopefully] one time you take STEP 1), and confidence intervals are for the mean of all observations (i.e. if you took the test ad nauseam, your true mean score would be estimated by that confidence interval given a value for the # of recalls-- or this could be the true mean score for all test takers who had the same # of recalls). Why is that important? Well, look at the prediction limits... pretty wide. For example, it looks like for someone who does 4000 recalls the interval is about 215-265 or so-- doesn't look as nice as those confidence limits, does it?

I thought it was interesting after I read the post. In any case, it's definitely something to consider when looking at the data.

 

[DNC127]

Is firecracker for DO's the same as the MD version but with OMM sprinkled in or is it different? Incoming DO student here who plans on taking USMLE, and was wondering which version would be recommended.

 

[CyberMaxx]

Some things to note with these-- first, the guy appears to have analyzed the data using a few different regressions, each with only one variable, so you don't have nearly as good of a picture as you would have by including the other variables in the model (although, he might have used a model with all 3 independent variables in it, it just doesn't look like it from the presentation). This is important because the current influence of each variable isn't likely to be accurately estimated-- one variable may be more important than it currently appear or one might actually be pretty useless-- but we won't see this without the proper modeling. Second, The correlations are all relatively weak-barely moderate, and the R-squared values of those regressions would be even lower. In other words, the "# of recalls" variable accounts for about 13% of the sample variation (literally, square r = 0.357 to get ~0.13) observed in the STEP 1 scores, which means that there are a lot of other influences on your STEP 1 score (we have about 87% of variation unaccounted for by # of recalls). Lastly, you'll want to look at the prediction interval limits, rather than the confidence interval limits. In this regression context, prediction intervals are for one, single observation (i.e. the [hopefully] one time you take STEP 1), and confidence intervals are for the mean of all observations (i.e. if you took the test ad nauseam, your true mean score would be estimated by that confidence interval given a value for the # of recalls-- or this could be the true mean score for all test takers who had the same # of recalls). Why is that important? Well, look at the prediction limits... pretty wide. For example, it looks like for someone who does 4000 recalls the interval is about 215-265 or so-- doesn't look as nice as those confidence limits, does it?

I thought it was interesting after I read the post. In any case, it's definitely something to consider when looking at the data.

Nice analysis. Yeah, I was never suggesting that doing x number of reviews would get you a certain score. I use that data like a goal setting tool. People who have done >100,000 reviews have, on average, done very well, and while replicating that usage of Firecracker isn't going to guarantee me anything, I figure it is a good place to pick a goal for myself.

I also appreciate that Firecracker at least publishes this data too. Not perfect, but more info than any other Step 1 review product releases... at least that I have seen.

 

[dempty]

Nice analysis. Yeah, I was never suggesting that doing x number of reviews would get you a certain score. I use that data like a goal setting tool. People who have done >100,000 reviews have, on average, done very well, and while replicating that usage of Firecracker isn't going to guarantee me anything, I figure it is a good place to pick a goal for myself.

I also appreciate that Firecracker at least publishes this data too. Not perfect, but more info than any other Step 1 review product releases... at least that I have seen.

Yeah, I didn't mean it in a bad way. I definitely agree with you that it's important to set those goals and using available data as motivation isn't a bad idea.

It was more of something for anyone (in general) to be aware of when looking at any type of research (especially internally performed research). Is firecracker useful? Most likely. Is it any better than other resources (making your own anki deck or buying one, for example) or does it add value if you use some combination of other resources (i.e. no material benefit on top of FA with UWorld and Rx)? Those are still unanswered questions that can't be addressed without reliable and unbiased sampling.

Good luck!

 

[sbuxaddict]

I have about 3 months before Step 1, and I really need to cover a lot of content review before I start doing questions. Any recommendations on how to best use FC right now?

 

[theKeithF]

I have about 3 months before Step 1, and I really need to cover a lot of content review before I start doing questions. Any recommendations on how to best use FC right now?

Hey there. Yesterday, we launched a huge update to Firecracker that introduced an entirely new mode specifically for this use case (i.e. dedicated prep during those last 30-90 days before board exams), which we're calling Dedicated Test Prep ("DTP") Mode. DTP Mode adjusts many of the core Firecracker experiences to better align with the way many of the most successful students prepare during their final weeks before boards, i.e. choosing a specific subject to study each day, reading through the subject matter either in textbooks or First Aid, and then answering test-style questions using some Q-bank like UWorld.

There's much more to it, but if you're using Firecracker MD or DO (not Legacy), I recommend using this mode. You can read more about it here. There's also a quick video tutorial. Those should answer a lot of your questions, but of course feel free to ping me if anything is confusing.