About a week ago I changed Anki from showing expired cards in order due to "lowest interval first." The change was phenominal--I'm up to 90+% reviews consistently (I was at 75%-80% before).

I am a bit worried though that some of these may be false positives--since they have the same interval, chances are I'm seeing the same cards again in close proximity to each other, at least with young cards. However part of the reason I made this change is that it was mentally jarring to go from a brand new card to a mature card and back again, and I ended up failing too many mature cards. That problem is gone now.

So I guess I'm torn. I'm leaning towards continuing in this way because of the beneficial effect it is having on mature cards, but I don't want there to be any long-term consequences.

Has anyone else experimented with this?

I haven't much experimented with it, but I can imagine it might be sort of a false positive, only because I find that I do a little better with the cards when I get cards in order that share the same primitive, or that have stories based off each other, but only because those primitives are fresh in my mind, not because I know the kanji really well. I feel like putting them in that kind of order might be the benefit that's giving you an increase in percentage. I could be entirely wrong though, this is all just speculation

Also, that mental jarring will eventually go away, and I think it's something you just have to push your way through. Remember, the idea is to be able to write any kanji, in any order, etc, when given a keyword. In my opinion, I think it would be better to stick to "in order due" rather than "oldest first," however, I don't think it'll make a huge difference in the long run.

mafried Wrote:However part of the reason I made this change is that it was mentally jarring to go from a brand new card to a mature card and back again, and I ended up failing too many mature cards. That problem is gone now.

I think this is a good thing.

Let's say you failed 5 cards in a row.

When it comes to reviewing them the first one might be difficult but I think the next four are easier, because you know the kanji is probably related to the one you just looked at.

I think having it all mixed up is better in the longrun.

Higher pass rate doesn't automatically mean you are doing better. If you reviewed kanji from #1 through to #2000 it would be a lot easier than doing it all jumbled up.

I think it's better to have it how it originally was.

Or basically, what sup3rbon said

sup3rbon Wrote:I haven't much experimented with it, but I can imagine it might be sort of a false positive, only because I find that I do a little better with the cards when I get cards in order that share the same primitive, or that have stories based off each other, but only because those primitives are fresh in my mind, not because I know the kanji really well. I feel like putting them in that kind of order might be the benefit that's giving you an increase in percentage. I could be entirely wrong though, this is all just speculation

Well it's not in a consistent order (Anki's randomization takes care of that). But until I get into intervals of 10+ days, I can be fairly certain that two cards next to each other were at least reviewed on the same day the last time I saw them (but otherwise they're completely shuffled).

The more I think about it though, the more I think it's not such a bad thing (addressing zoletype's point here too). I am remembering the card after all, right? And that alone strengthens the connections in my mind.

sup3rbon Wrote:Also, that mental jarring will eventually go away, and I think it's something you just have to push your way through.

Unfortunately it hasn't, and I've been doing this for years (joined in 2006!). I stupidly assumed it was my memory that was bad, when in fact it might be my methods...