r/Anki • u/TheGiantHungyLizard • 19h ago

Question Why does the memorized card count decrease with retention percentage in the simulator when capping daily reviews?

context:

#1(blue) is 9999 reviews a day
#2(orange) is 200 reviews a day
#3(yellow) is 100 reviews a day

can somebody give tips how i can use this simulator for myself and apply its data?

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u/Educational_Risk7637 18h ago

Increasing retention percentage means you see each individual card more times for review. If you cap the number of reviews per day, Anki stops adding new cards if doing so would put you over that daily review cap*. The higher retention you target, the more time you'll spend reviewing cards, and the less time you'll spend adding new cards. Thus, fewer total memorized cards as target retention goes up.

*: Actually, there is a global setting that toggles this on or off, but I don't suggest changing it from the default.

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u/TheGiantHungyLizard 18h ago

could you explain why you wouldnt recommend changing it?

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u/Educational_Risk7637 17h ago

That will result in a huge (and mostly invisible) backlog. You'll see some new cards, learn them, then the incoming flow of new cards will result in more reviews than you can handle. So some of these, eventually probably most of these, will fall off the bottom (not be reviewed on time), and you'll forget them. The end result will be a deck of cards that you've reviewed a handful of times, but most of which you might have only a ~20-30% chance of recalling.

For this reason, you want to leave 'new cards ignore review limit' off.

I have seen a handful of people advocate for this in very specific situations, but it's esoteric and not something I suggest you attempt without a solid understanding for exactly what will result and comfort in interpreting your stats so that you can monitor what is happening.

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u/FSRS_bot bot 19h ago

Beep boop, human! If you have a question about FSRS, please refer to the pinned post, it has all the FSRS-related information you may ever need. It is highly recommended to click link 3 from said post - which leads to the Anki manual - to learn how to set FSRS up.

If you want to know more about the simulator, click link 3 from the pinned post I linked and go to The Simulator.

Remember that the only button you should press if you couldn't recall the answer is 'Again'. 'Hard' is a passing grade, not a failing grade. If you misuse 'Hard', all of your intervals will be excessively long.

You don't need to reply, and I will not reply to your future posts. Have a good day!

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