The Official Anki Thread

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Brahventus said:
Wouldn't capping the reviews defeat the purpose of anki though?
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I see where you're coming from, but sometimes it is super hard to keep up with all the reviews. So maybe it is better to cap and do less than not to do it at all?
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dentalhopeful10 said:
I see where you're coming from, but sometimes it is super hard to keep up with all the reviews. So maybe it is better to cap and do less than not to do it at all?
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Agree. Only cap if you find it demoralizing to see a queue of 500 cards. It's just human nature.
 
After importing a deck, my anki slows down a ton after doing the first 7-8 questions. Does anyone have any suggestions? I even tried merging everything into one deck and I still have issues.
 
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Make Or Break said:
After importing a deck, my anki slows down a ton after doing the first 7-8 questions. Does anyone have any suggestions? I even tried merging everything into one deck and I still have issues.
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By "Everything, " did you mean you merged the subdecks into one deck or the actual cards into one deck?
 
Does anyone know how to make Anki more easily searchable on iPad or on the web? If I want to look up something for reference on the Anki software on my computer, it's very easy to find using the search bar. However, when I'm on my rotations and using my iPad, I find that my search results produce unformatted/difficult to read text and whatever images I've imported also don't show up. Anyone know how to fix this or have a solution?
 
How do i set an interval of 2 months; the best for a short period of time.
 
Can you clearify what you are asking for? Graduating interval? Easy interval? 2 months is a longggggg time for any of the settings.


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mavric1298 said:
Can you clearify what you are asking for? Graduating interval? Easy interval? 2 months is a longggggg time for any of the settings.


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I'm trying to see everything as often as possible for the next two months. I'm not sure which interval will keep everything coming quickly enough. Maybe like a max of 7 days.
 
change your interval modifier to something lower than 1 (100%). 100% does nothing, anything over makes the interval between seeing the card longer than what the anki algorithm generates, anything less makes the card appear more frequently. I would also change your starting easer closer to 100. I believe it starts at 250%, which means that if the card is gonna show up next at 10 days, if it's graduated each "good" answer results in a 2.5x delay in seeing the card again, so in this case it would next be seen in 25 days, than 62 days, etc
 
Hello all,

Anyone have experience dealing with "empty front side" messages? One of my decks seems to be corrupted. I can see the cards in the Browser, with a picture on the front side and text on the back.

I’ve tried updating the content of the text, tried using different images, tried switching the places of the text and pictures so that the text is on the front side. Nothing has worked so far — each time I open a card in study mode, I get an error message that says “The front of this card is empty. Please run Tools>Empty Cards.” And when I do, it says I have 195 empty cards to be deleted, all of which are very much not empty. Any help would be much appreciated.
 
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2nd day of med school here guys. I started on Anki but for now, I've been just doing definitions... I wish I can make better cards but it looks like I can't make second order or third order type cards yet. Can someone give me some suggestions?
 
Yo are you guys making cards just for the straight up basic science classes or are you also making them for the "soft" classes like clinical skills and population hearth type stuff?
 
Foot Fetish said:
Yo are you guys making cards just for the straight up basic science classes or are you also making them for the "soft" classes like clinical skills and population hearth type stuff?
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I am doing mainly for straight up basic science classes. But it's like I only make around 20-30 cards per subject per day (biochem and anatomy). Is it too little? For random stuffs like clinical skills and populations, I made maybe like 5 cards a day. Is it similar to yours?
 
hsk013 said:
2nd day of med school here guys. I started on Anki but for now, I've been just doing definitions... I wish I can make better cards but it looks like I can't make second order or third order type cards yet. Can someone give me some suggestions?
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What do you mean?
 
idkididk said:
What do you mean?
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I'm not entirely sure but I think it's when they incorporate two or more concepts together and make questions more applicable (MCAT-style rather than straight up memorizing).
 
Yes! you can do multiple include/excludes to custom study decks, which is exactly what you are wanting I believe


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For those of you that are heavily relying on Anki to study, how many flashcards is too many when making them solely for the purpose of your unit tests (ie, not for boards/high yield stuff)? I have gone back and forth as to whether I want to study via flash cards or not. Today after watching an Anki tutorial I decided to go for it. For two 50 minute lectures I made 110 flash cards (a lot of cloze). Is this an efficient way to make use of Anki? The lectures were a little detail heavy and covered a lot of Histo so I think I made more than I typically would.

I don't have experience with this but I see a lot of people mentioned they only add 20-50 flash cards a day, and I imagine I'll probably be making ~100 daily for my 3 lectures. I want to make sure I'm not inundating myself with too much.

Also, my background is a clueless M1 who's still trying out how the hell to study effectively (if you couldn't tell =P)

Thanks!
 
Here is my question:

When I go to my statistics, my deck says that I have 119 reviews due tomorrow
When I go to custom study and "review ahead" for one day, it says I have 800 cards available for review.

How can I reconcile these two? I have a hard time believing I'm 800 cards behind but I guess it could be.
 
mikil100 said:
For those of you that are heavily relying on Anki to study, how many flashcards is too many when making them solely for the purpose of your unit tests (ie, not for boards/high yield stuff)? I have gone back and forth as to whether I want to study via flash cards or not. Today after watching an Anki tutorial I decided to go for it. For two 50 minute lectures I made 110 flash cards (a lot of cloze). Is this an efficient way to make use of Anki? The lectures were a little detail heavy and covered a lot of Histo so I think I made more than I typically would.

I don't have experience with this but I see a lot of people mentioned they only add 20-50 flash cards a day, and I imagine I'll probably be making ~100 daily for my 3 lectures. I want to make sure I'm not inundating myself with too much.

Also, my background is a clueless M1 who's still trying out how the hell to study effectively (if you couldn't tell =P)

Thanks!
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Again I'm still just premed - but that is a lot of cards. I try to limit myself to <50, although occasionally I would do more. For in depth biochem, I was doing roughly 15-20 an hour of lecture? I don't think there is a right or wrong answer, I think you just need to watch you stats (how many you get right first try is an important one) and see how many you can add but still stay caught up. Also, just on how you word questions, you can get a whole bunch of info onto one card. Don't quiz yourself on every single little fact. For example I often use the "stems" of my cloze cards to add info that I will want to remember, but isn't exactly high yield. This way, I read that fact every time, and while the card isn't testing me on it, I still get reminded. For example:

Covalent (not allosteric) control by phosphorylation of GPb to make GPa is catalyzed by {{c1:: phosphorylase kinase::enzyme}}. Full activation requires both {{c2::calcium ions}} and {{c2:: phosphorylation by PKA}}

I crammed a whole lot of info into one card there - but it's still simple (ish). To my point though, I didn't need to make a card to remember that allosteric R/T control is different than covalent control (phosphorylated or not). This info was in the question itself
 
How can I go through all of my cards across multiple decks in one session (ALL of them; not just the ones that are up for review) and have the ones I got wrong go off into a separate pile that I can then review separately? (I.e. similar to Quizlet)

I basically want to cram all of the cards I made in one sitting. Halp!
 
To those that live and die by Anki, excluding image occlusion cards, what percentage of your cards are cloze vs basic cards? Cloze are naturally much easier to make as I can manufacture them straight from the slides but there are obviously cons.

I was planning on doing almost all cloze along with image occlusion to memorize the minutiae and then concentrate on firecracker along with practice questions at the end to utilize more critical thinking.
 
iDOliveinMD said:
To those that live and die by Anki, excluding image occlusion cards, what percentage of your cards are cloze vs basic cards? Cloze are naturally much easier to make as I can manufacture them straight from the slides but there are obviously cons.

I was planning on doing almost all cloze along with image occlusion to memorize the minutiae and then concentrate on firecracker along with practice questions at the end to utilize more critical thinking.
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I don't use any cloze deletions personally. I try to keep the question as minimal as possible, just enough to jog my memory on the topic at hand, and the back of the card is rich in detail. I don't subscribe to the school of thought of making tons of cards with sparse detail on each. For me it's best to have fewer cards loaded with information that I am forced to recall all at once.
 
Foot Fetish said:
I don't use any cloze deletions personally. I try to keep the question as minimal as possible, just enough to jog my memory on the topic at hand, and the back of the card is rich in detail. I don't subscribe to the school of thought of making tons of cards with sparse detail on each. For me it's best to have fewer cards loaded with information that I am forced to recall all at once.
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Sounds like you need a refresher on the 20 rules of learning. You're blatantly contradicting rules 4 & 5... https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules
 
Thanks for the responses! Interesting article @Elessar so I'm not really getting much of a consensus. I'm sure there are different ways you could use Anki and still have it be at some level of effectiveness. For instance, Firecracker for the most part is basic formed anki cards with longer explanations on the other side which some people hate. I think that I am going to stick with mostly short cloze (~80%) cards & practice questions for my first exam though and see what happens and if I have to switch to more basic cards or abandon Anki all together lol.
 
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I use pretty much all cloze cards, if for any reason it is easier than switching back and forth between card types. I think they are a good way to force you to keep your cards to a one card one concept rule
 
cj_cregg said:
I don't mean to be a giant dbag here, but for the M1 students on this thread, your recommendations in terms of the number of cards will probably not work for most med students who are using Anki religiously. My med school biochem lectures covered in 50 minutes what we spent an entire week on in undergrad. And for med school (at least professor written exams at my school) you really do need to quiz yourself on every little fact if you want to do more than just scrape by.
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No worries, it's a fair concern, but my example was a 500 level graduate series that is normally 12 weeks that was done in 4... it's roughly equal to med school biochem in both difficulty and quantity of material covered. My 2 points were;
A) Not that you don't have to know every little fact, but that you need to understand what you need to quiz yourself on, and you can really cut down on the cards this way. In my example, I already know - that I know - that covalent modification is not the same as allosteric control. I know that a kinase is going to phosphorylate or dephosphorylate. Understanding what you know and what you don't is half the battle with cards and over-creating. I find many people who just started anki throw EVERYTHING and the kitchen sink onto a card, at which point, it starts becoming less useful.
B) That there isn't a good rule for "how many cards" other than - what you can keep up with. Your example is perfect - when you are doing image occlusions for A/P, your card counts are going to be way higher, and thats okay, because review time is going to be quick for those.


Also, this might help you. https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/3emigg/hotkey_to_change_card_type/

I use almost all cloze, some image occ, and very few basic.
 
iDOliveinMD said:
To those that live and die by Anki, excluding image occlusion cards, what percentage of your cards are cloze vs basic cards? Cloze are naturally much easier to make as I can manufacture them straight from the slides but there are obviously cons.

I was planning on doing almost all cloze along with image occlusion to memorize the minutiae and then concentrate on firecracker along with practice questions at the end to utilize more critical thinking.
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1. If Possible, Image Occlusion. I love Image Occlusion. Fast and easy to make, plus I tend learn/remember visually. - 35% (working on increasing that)
2. Cloze, if I can't occlude. Way faster to make than back/front. I don't like having to go back and forth in the options menus. - 60%
3. Normal - 5%

I'm currently making ~50/1hr lecture. Less in Embryo (30ish), more in Anatomy (100ish). I love Anatomy though because they're almost all Image Occlusions. Worth nothing, I usually do back/forth, so if I add a single definition its usually 2 cards.

Occasionally I do Gross information: "Explain the process of AP at Neuromuscular Junction" (Long answer in Cloze), but its mostly paragraphs with 4/5 seperate clozes. If I find its too easy to remember or answers give another away, I attach the Clozes to 1 question.

I do find that I might be making too many, but I'm not having trouble keeping up thus far. Weekdays are hectic but I haven't gotten behind once and my weekends are mostly free. I try to use the weekend to tack on other studying methods and reevaluate weaknesses.
 
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When I move a card from one deck to another is there a way to make Anki treat the card as a completely new card that was just created? Or does it do that already?
 
schrutefarm said:
Please let me know if I am posting a question on a thread already made about this, but for those of you who are anki all the way for everything, how do you have time to study your cards? I mean I heard people say that making it is part of the retention, but I feel like that retention is still a low %. There is content worth an entire semester (or block for some) that is needed to be known, so when I make my cards, it takes FOREVER and by the time I am done just for that lecture content, the day is up and I feel like I didn't even study or retain as much as the time put in? This question is for those who solely use anki and not much other else. I would REALLY appreciate your input..
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Some people use anki cards that their classmates have shared. If your class isn't already doing that, maybe you can find a study group and split up the work (so you only make 1/5, for example, of the cards yourself).
 
schrutefarm said:

People I know don't use anki, nor are they responsible to keep up with material each day to make cards .
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How do you feel about using bros cards? They're step oriented so it might not be a perfect fit with class, but maybe you could fill in the gaps yourself and it would be less work than starting from scratch
 
Hey guys, does anyone know how I can save/run anki from a flash drive? I found the instructions below on the anki website, but it I get an error message anytime I try to rename something with ":" or "/" in the name. Also how do I copy the entire "\Program Files\Anki folder" to the flash drive? Does that mean just drag and drop the Anki icon from my desktop into the flashdrive? thanks. I can save it to a flashdrive and open it on the same computer, but when I try the flashdrive on a different computer Anki doesn't open.


Anki can be installed on a flash drive and run as a portable application:

  • Copy the \Program Files\Anki folder to the flash drive, so you have a folder like G:\Anki.
  • Create a text file called G:\anki.bat with the following text:
\anki\anki.exe -b \ankidata
If you would like to prevent the black command prompt window from remaining open, you can instead use:

start /b \anki\anki.exe -b \ankidata
  • Double-clicking on anki.bat should start Anki with the user data stored in G:\ankidata.
 
Any guides (better than the Anki manual) on how to set up the times/settings for the cards? I have about 300 cards, but have no idea what the options in time scales mean. Got a test next week and trying to use Anki.
 
I use cloze for my cards. In histology it takes a lot of time to add all the info into Anki. For this reason I take a screenshot of the subjectI want to memorise(which is from PDF-textbook), and highlight most of the important stuff. So the back of the card is ready, it has all the important information and it is highlighted. On the front card, I have a title and include all the important keywords. Then I type my answer, and in that way I make 1 card instead of 10. It is also easier to organize my thoughts. For example this is a how a card for gap junctions look like.

Front - Gap Junction( location, composition, conexons, subunits-conexins, function, conformation)
Back - The picture with the text, which I took contains the important information which is highlited.

How do you feel about this method?
 
^ this. One piece of discreet info per card. Using @northy95 s example, if you knew the location but not the competition, you would have to mark the whole card incorrect, then see it again. I found it really messes with the process, because you don't really ever know what you know, vs what you need to study more. However, I do sometimes put a ton of info onto the card - but in a different way still only testing one question. For example in virology, I made a custom card, where I type out 12 fields for each virus. Name, type, genome, serotype, pathogenesis, etc etc etc. It creates a card for each field, but when the answers are revealed, it shows all the info with the specific question highlighted. This way I reinforce the entire picture, but only test myself on one question at a time, and know what I'm getting right and what I need to practice more. EDIT: Attached the card design so if someone wants to follow something similar they can use the "coding", you can't see it all but it's just repeating the same pattern

Screen Shot 2016-11-14 at 2.10.13 PM.png

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mavric1298 said:
^ this. One piece of discreet info per card. Using @northy95 s example, if you knew the location but not the competition, you would have to mark the whole card incorrect, then see it again. I found it really messes with the process, because you don't really ever know what you know, vs what you need to study more. However, I do sometimes put a ton of info onto the card - but in a different way still only testing one question. For example in virology, I made a custom card, where I type out 12 fields for each virus. Name, type, genome, serotype, pathogenesis, etc etc etc. It creates a card for each field, but when the answers are revealed, it shows all the info with the specific question highlighted. This way I reinforce the entire picture, but only test myself on one question at a time, and know what I'm getting right and what I need to practice more. EDIT: Attached the card design so if someone wants to follow something similar they can use the "coding", you can't see it all but it's just repeating the same pattern

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Personally, if I find that there are situations which are exceptions.

1. This is especially true if one piece of info gives the other away.
2. For genetics, I had a lot of cards which give symptoms and expect both a name and inheritance pattern since I knew beforehand it would be tested this way.
3. Another example are cards I create right before the test. Sometimes these will be on large amounts of info to explain a pattern or something, since I should have all the discreet details memorized (hopefully).
4. I like to create compare/contrast cards, where I have to answer both the cause of Type 1 and Type 2 at once (Orotic Aciduria is a good example) at once.
 
I found a similar "exceptions" to the one fact per card, but I usually use a cloze delete and have it in context;

"In yeast fermentation, the reaction that occurs stops after the {{c2::decarboxylation}} step with resolution to form {{c2::acetealdehyde} without loss/gain of electrons (no oxidation/reduction). Acetaldehye in yeast fermentation is converted to {{c1::ethanol}}"

I need to know both the reaction type and the product, so I test them together
 
Hello, everyone! I wondered how can I learn information and make it organized in my head. For example, if I wanted to tell you everything about muscle tissue, if I use anki I kinda get lost where to start when I speak verbatim. If you ask me a question, I will answer it, but how does the information flow in an organized manner. Another example would be the process of Spermatogenesis, Oogenesis, and Fertilization, another example to explain the steps in Meiosis.
 
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Image occlusion works well for processes, and organizing is just something you have to do in your own head. You're never going to sit down and "learn everything about muscle tissue". What you would do is learn a bunch of discrete facts, and as your are learning them you need to learn them in a context. You don't put anything in Anki that you don't "understand" aka know where it fits in context.


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What do you think, about adding a big picture with the highlighted text which is the answer and adding many questions to it.
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Anyone know how to make Anki less blurry on high resolution displays like the surface, without having buttons be incredibly small? I do also use anki on another computer and my phone, so making the font within the card ginormous probably isn't the best option.
 
Thanks for your help, but I did that and everything is now tiny (and crystal clear) but is there a way to get larger buttons and text while still keeping it clear?
 
northy95 said:
What do you think, about adding a big picture with the highlighted text which is the answer and adding many questions to it.
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I would be hesitant to do that - if anything I would add that to the extras field. Did you read the 20 rules I posted earlier? Keep the questions and answers simple is the best course for memorizing high yield info


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