Recently I've been fiddling around with some of the statistics on Kanji on Wikipedia from this post: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3216 and from it I had a question on sentence mining.

Having looked at the results, 50% of the Kanji listed on Wikipedia could be recognized from knowing only the 173 most frequently used characters. When studying with RtK you reach the 173rd most frequently used Kanji when you are at frame 1296. Using the data from above, you can calculate that by time you reach frame 1296 you will actually be able to recognize 71.76% of the Kanji on Wikipedia.

So, this brings up my question. Once you have reached frame 1296 would it be a safe to start sentence mining with something like Mina no Nihongo or KO? You would already have the top 173 Kanji, which make up half of Wikipedia, plus an additional 21.76% to help you out even more.

And for me personally, I finish 100 new Kanji every five days, with and average a return on investment of 4.54% at the 1296 frame point and would dwindle down to 1.21% by the end of RtK1. At these rates it looks like I could never end up catching myself before I end the book.

Would this work or are the kanji found in the last 750 of the book important even early on in books like KO and Mina no Nihongo? Any insight is helpful.

Knowing 71.76% of the kanji in a given context often means that you'll understand 71.76% of a sentence. Still, you won't know until you try, right? I suggest that you go for it, but do make sure to finish what's left of RtK, too.

hknamida Wrote:Knowing 71.76% of the kanji in a given context often means that you'll understand 71.76% of a sentence. Still, you won't know until you try, right? I suggest that you go for it, but do make sure to finish what's left of RtK, too.

I definitely would plan on continuing through RtK. It's the top goal to keep chugging along like I am at 20 a day. Maybe not the most, but it works for me.

I was thinking of maybe a sentence a day or something. And if that ends up messing me up, or proves unpratical due to a lack of knowing the other 29% of the Kanji then I'll just drop it.

I have to say that when I worked through RTK1, I didn't use Anki or any other SRS. I used paper flashcard, a little classical, or extremely (depend on your standpoint). And the result was outstanding, though I gave up after finished b/c I did not know where to go on, my problem is up to now.

Tell more about my paper flashcard, generally speaking, I recognized that when working on computer, my memory almost shuts down, I can't much focus and not remember as long as paper fc. Every time I went to school, I would choose 1 of them (I divided it in to 40 decks, 50 facts for each one) and carry along. I must say, it's amazing. I could remember about 99%, and the retain rate reduced over time, the more cards you have, the more cards you forget, IT'S NORMAL!

I hope what I said help some of you!