Ease factor

Ease factor applies to individual cards. 

Each card has its own ease factor associated with it no matter which deck you move it to. 

Here's what happens when to the ease factor when you answer a card.

• Easy = add 15% to ease 

• Good = ease remains unchanged

• Hard = subtract 15% from ease 

• Again = subtract 20% from ease 

Lower ease modifier makes cards appear at higher frequency. So if you keep failing a card and press Again, you'll the cards more often to make it easier to remember.

We recommend to only use Good or Again. Keep it simple. Keep it binary. You remember the answer or you don't.

By defaut the ease factor is 250%, the lowest it can get is 130%.

How intervals are calculated for graduated Cards (detailed)

Remember that we saw the formula for calculating new intervals ? 

New interval = current interval * starting ease * interval modifier. 

That was only when you answer good. Since ease factor changed depending on your answer, let's see the different formulas for the sake of completion.

The one interesting thing happening is if you press Again.

• Easy = current interval * ease * interval modifier * easy bonus (and 15% added to the ease factor)

• Good = current interval * ease * interval modifier

• Hard = current interval * interval modifier * 1.2 (and 15% subtracted from the ease factor)

• Again = card goes to a relearning step. (See lapses part)

  • Remember the 4 cards types: new, learning / relearning, graduated. Since we're talking graduated cards here, that means the card is demoted from graduated to relearning.

  • Each again is a “lapse”. 

Don’t get stuck in “Ease hell” 

Now, that we've seen in details the interval see the difference it can make when failing a learning card and a graduated card.

“Ease hell” affects graduated cards. 

• Suppose a new card has an interval of 5 days.

• If marked Good, you see it again in 5 * 2.5 * 1 = 12 days.

• If marked Good, you see it again in 12 * 2.5 * 1 = 30 days.

• If marked Good, you see it again in 30 * 2.5 * 1 = 75 days. 

Let's say you have another card, still an interval of 5 days but you kept answering hard or again, and the ease factor dropped from the default 250% to minimum of 130%.

• Now, we start again at an interval of 5 days.

• If marked Good, you see it again in 5 * 1.3 * 1 = 6d.

• If marked Good, you see it again in 6 * 1.3 * 1 = 8d.

• If marked Good, you see it again in 8 * 1.3 * 1 = 10d.

So if you have lots of cards with low ease factor, it can be a problem, because you'll multiply your reviews, and spend way more time doing them than necessary.

Thats's why you need to set up your learning phase right, with the right steps.

The rest of the Settings

New Cards

• Steps: We went over the steps, in details in the previous page. They set up how many times and when you'll see the cards in the learning phase.

• Order: it's up to you, you'll probably use Morphman anyway, so this makes no difference.

• New cards/day: up to you. I'd rather go low, and add some more if I feel like it than having too many. On your deck you can have a custom study where you can increase your day's new card limit. So if my new cards were easy, I add some more. I keep it low because I don't like spending more than 10 minutes doing reviews. Use the Anki Simulator addon to know how many reviews you'll have in the future based on your settings.

• Graduating interval: is the delay between answering Good on a card with no steps left, and seing the card again.

• Easy interval: is the delay between answering easy on a learning card and seeing it in review mode for the first time.  

• Starting ease: we covered that above. It's used in the formula for interval. Each card has it's own. Answering again, lowers it, and you'll see it more often.

Reviews

• Maximum Reviews / day: just put the maximum, because you want to do all your reviews no matter what. If you have too much reviews, then revise your learning steps.

• Easy bonus: increase the number to increase the interval of when you'll see a card for the next time if answer easy. It's recommended to only use again or good.

• Interval modifier: we covered that above. It applies to a whole deck. Increase the number to increase the interval of when you'll see a card for the next time.

• Maximum interval: the interval keeps increasing with every good reviews. If you want a maximum interval you can make sure you can see a cards at least every 6 months, or one year, or 10 years.

Lapses

Each again, is a lapse. But this only applies to graduated cards, not learning cards. When you fail a graduated card, it becomes a relearning card.

• Steps: the steps apply to the relearning phase.

• New interval: controls how much Anki should reduce the previous interval by. Leaving it to 0 doesn't affect it.

• Minimum interval: applies a minimum limit to the new interval.

• Leech threshold: is when you fail the card too often. With the option below, you can suspend or tag the card when you fail it the number of times specified here.

General

• Ignore answer times longer than... allows you to not influence your statistics of time studying. If you get disctracted and don't answer your card until that time, it won't get counted. This doesn't affect the schedule in any way. It's just for data.

• Show answer time: display a timer in the lower right corner to see how much time you're spending on the card.

• Automatically play audio: You can uncheck the box, and decide when you want to play the sound. You can press "r" or "F5" . Or you can have the sound button on your card style and click on it.

• Always include question side when replaying audio will play the sound on the front card when doing a replay.