FSRS

I decided to make the change to Anki's now-built-in FSRS scheduler. It was a hard decision to make since Anki's SM-2 algorithm is battle-tested, but since I have ~98% retention rate for my Korean sentence cards, I decided to go ahead with it (next section expands on this a bit).

For now I've opted to stay within the default parameters for the scheduler. In a month or two when I have a lot of reviewing under FSRS done, I plan on running the optimizer based on only cards that were first reviewed on/after my FSRS start date.

Why high retention is maybe bad

(Shoutout to Shirobon for introducing me to this idea) There is some evidence to show that a high retention rate is bad, because it means that you are reviewing too often (simply put: if you reviewed less often, your retention rate would be lower). I don't mind the increased daily burden, but the theory is that memories are best "encoded" when you review something just as you're about to forget it, forcing you to work harder to remember it. For example, if you reviewed something every day for a month, you aren't really trying hard at all to memorize it, since it's still fresh in your mind every day. If you reviewed it only 3 times in one month and had to think a little harder each time, the memory would last longer.

Website updates

I'm also adding a new box on this page aside from this little "blog" where I'll be summarizing important learnings I've had. I'll still be talking about them here in this blog, but I want to have a small box for quick reference.