There's an old line that goes something like "When you're learning skiing, if you don't fall a lot, you're not trying hard enough." (I.e. you're being too conservative/too chicken.)

Maybe something similar applies to SRS: if one's failure rate is too low, maybe it's a sign one is being too conservative.

My failure rate with my RTK Anki deck (the only SRS I'm doing at the moment) is about 7-10%. Is that too low? Too high?

Of course, I don't think there is a "right" answer, but I'm curious where everyone is on this.

By "failure" rate I mean the fraction of cards that I really just don't remember at all and/or get completely wrong.

It does. Everyone is different. Many say to aim for 90%. Some 85%. Some more or less.

The only answer is: Aim for the % that makes you learn the best/fastest.

Only use good for things you've failed (sometimes even multiple times). Use easy and very easy for everything else.The failure rate isn't nearly as important as the success rate on mature cards. Anki's site says you want to aim for a success rate of around 95% (if i remember correctly) for mature cards.

I was at 95% success for the first 1000 or so, but that's dropped to around 90% now that I'm juggling around 1400 of them.

The disappointment of the dropping percentage is more than made up for by that glorious figure of 1400 though. So I'd say, keep the focus more on the total number that you can remember rather than the percentage, since the former will only go up and, at least in my case, the latter will only go down (at least until I stop adding new cards).

gavin.schultz-ohkubo Wrote:The disappointment of the dropping percentage is more than made up for by that glorious figure of 1400 though.

So true. It's all about numbers. 95+% of 300 is nothing compared to say 80% of 6000.

Gfp, if you feel like you're learning well, that rate sounds fine to me. Maybe push yourself a bit harder and see how it goes? My initial-look failure rate is often as high as 25%, and I'll often fail a card 3 times or so, seeing it every 12 hours until I start to get it right. But as others say, my failure-rate on mature cards is quite low, in the 5% range.

I'm not sure what happened, but I just checked some of my success rates.
They're a lot lower than I actually expected them to be, (78-86). This could be due to the fact that I took about a month and a half off of SRS and then started up again, having forgotten a lot.

I don't know what to tell you. We seem to have the opposite problem, or opposite grading procedures.

http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/ProgressBars

This is what Anki has to say about it. In my opinion, anything higher than 80% is A-Ok.

Aim for 100%. It's not going to happen though, but the higher the better right? I'd say, as long as you're above 75%, you don't have to worry too much. It's working, although a bit slow. 85-95% is the area I would consider "good". Below that, I might start to consider options for how to improve.

While I acknowledge that the OP asked his question in a strange way by framing the situation opposite of how most people think of it, I also find it hilarious that after asking for an optimal failure rate, the advice he got was to aim for 90~100%.

Ahem.

That said, I wouldn't worry too much about the failure rate. Ideally, your goal is to pass every card when it comes up. Realistically, that isn't possible, but it still seems like aiming for a particular failure rate is looking at the problem backwards. Failure is something that should be accepted, not aimed for. Just be mindful if the rate gets high enough to indicate a problem with your studying.

In my Spanish deck I have 3% failure on mature cards. In my Japanese deck I have nearly 20% failure on mature cards.

I think that I made my Japanese deck better for active recall, though. My Spanish deck is purely passive and consists mostly of cool quotes/phrases that I chose with no regard to actual difficulty.

If you're just reading and understanding, expect a lower fail rate. If you have to write out difficult kanji compounds, expect a higher one.
Keep in mind that I didn't SRS for the second half of RTK, so that may have made the kanji more difficult for me than it is for y

Yeah I think the fail rate is pretty individual, and different factors affect it. I test my writing, and one little missed/wrong stroke fails the card. It could be a compound with 50+ strokes, and if I miss one=fail. But that's just the way I grade myself. I also grade for fluidity, and don't give myself a 3 unless it comes in around 2-3 seconds of less, so I don't have a ton of Easy graded cards. And like someone said - only look at the mature cards.

Personally, I'd be really happy if I had 90%+, but I'm at 84.6 which is ok by my own self standards.

One thing that f****s it up is reviewing late at night if I'm sleepy. I used to "clear that deck every day no matter what!", but now I know to stop if I'm tired - it's a waste of time and fails cards that should normally pass.

Mcjon01 Wrote:While I acknowledge that the OP asked his question in a strange way by framing the situation opposite of how most people think of it...

Let me explain that strangeness: I've been wondering that maybe one reason for my incredibly slow progress with RTK has to do with the fact that I'm aiming for too low a failure rate, and that maybe I should be content if I only get, say, 80% of the cards right (on first encounter) in each review session. In other words, maybe aiming for such a low failure rate amounts to not fully taking advantage of SRS. (What I mean by this is that SRS could be construed as an accounting system that lets you keep progressing steadily even when your average performance is less than stellar.)

Evil_Dragon Wrote:http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/ProgressBars

This is what Anki has to say about it.

Good to know. Thanks for the link.

And thanks to all for your replies!

I used to get pretty low recall rates on new cards, don't worry about, it all evens out eventually.

Now 6 months after finishing, my review rate is 85%, +/-5%, again seems fine to me, not going to put in massive effort to improve it.

It's also very dependant on where you are in your studies, how you use anki and how you grade yourself. example: I'm towards the end of my high intensity RTK (about 4.5 months) at the moment a typical day is 2-300 reps @85-90%. 2 months ago and average day was 3-400 reps at 50-60% - every day i would basically pass 50% of cards and fail the other half and then get them again on the 2nd go. I never "studied" any information before anki-ing it though, i just saw it for the first time in anki so basically my first pass on every card was a fail. and when you introduce 100 cards in a day and have to learn them as you go it produces a very high failure rate (a few heavy days of <30% pass). but these clear very quickly and now i'm recalling more than 70% first go (15% are fails, 15% are passing the fails). early on during the easy stuff my rate was very high, then i got into the guts of rtk and it drooped and now it's improving again.

also, i'm a stickler for getting it right. letting "almost" through doesn't really help me and failing helps in the long run.

end result of the above is that my deck life rate is ~70% in 20,000 reps. reps are high for my current level of progress, but considering i never actually "studied" anything outside of anki i'm ok with that.

personally, i rate % of cards mature as the more interesting one to watch - straight up pass/fail is not so useful but pushing cards out to maturity means you must have got them atleast 3 times in a row with the 3rd at an interval of 10-15 days (typically), which for mine is a better indication of progress...

I don't like getting less than 75% on new cards, Though at times I went as low as 60% when powering WAY TOO MANY in a day

I find this to be a good balance between pushing myself to get a lot done, and not being overwhelmed by failed kanji that keep coming back to haunt me.