The SRS description in the link there sounds fine. The problem I’m running into is the spacing and repetition of terms as they appear in a single day while I’m trying to clear my items list and increase the rate of new terms added. Here’s an example of the discrepancy between the SRS description and how it actually works for me:
A grade of 3 (“got it”) gives an interval about 2.2 times as long as the one you just had, not the one you were scheduled for, if you studied it on time. If you remembered it while overdue, Skritter guesses that you knew it better than we’d thought, so the next interval is longer. For example, if an item was scheduled for one week, and you saw it after two weeks, you’ll get it again in about 3.4 weeks.
In reality, if I draw a character correctly on the first try and proceed with it marked as “got it,” I will see it again within 30 seconds to about 2 minutes’ time, for probably at least 4 more times. Marking it as “too easy” increases the interval somewhat, but at present I’m still guaranteed to see it later that same day, usually before 10 minutes is up–and that’s only if I mark it as “too easy” the first time it appears. Otherwise, it comes up repeatedly, with little interval in between.
I have noticed when pulling the info on a specific term that it often says it was last shown a certain number of days or weeks ago, but my impression–untested, since it would require more time and focus than I have–is that my current study queue is largely comprised of terms I saw the previous day, with about 3-5 new terms added in.
Whatever the case, my progress over the last 2-3 months has largely come to a standstill. Looking over my stats on the legacy page, you can see pretty clearly the trend: in order to keep progress going in May, I had to expend twice as much time studying. Most of that was going around in circles with the app making draw and redraw and redraw again the same terms, no matter how I marked them by difficulty. Switching to the beta app has allowed me to at least skip all the extra drawing, but it’s introduced its own set of issues in terms of what I’m presented with for study. This month, I’m wiped out, and you can see that too. My study time is back down to levels that I’d maintained prior to May with consistent gains, but now my progress has flatlined.
This is getting to be a serious problem. I was supposed to be in review mode 2 months ago, and spending the bulk of my study time reading and using authentic media, but instead I’m still chasing my tail with 18% of my last study list hovering out of reach. I don’t know what happened, but something big occurred in about April/May that wrecked everything. Maybe that tracks with some identifiable internal change you made at the time. I hope so, because as things are, the app isn’t much use to me as a learning tool anymore: it’s draining time and mental energy from me, while showing little result for the effort.
As to the website, I recall the last time I did a study session there that I was able to go 10-15 minutes without seeing a single repeat term. Otoh there are still major discrepancies with the study items list there–I just visited to check my stats before writing this reply, and even after the recent fixes after this week’s meltdown, the 2.0 website is showing 2013 items due while the beat app tells me it’s 87. Of course, 87 items on the app probably equates to about 2000 actual views, if it’s even possible to get the list cleared to 0, but on the front end at least, the reporting is inconsistent between UIs.
I’d spend more time studying at the website if it weren’t for hardware limitations. I can only squeeze out about 3 items per minute using a mouse, and my writing pad is really ineffective with short strokes. I don’t guess you guys have a recommendation for a good pad for character study that comes in under $100, do you? I was thinking about opening a thread about it…
