[Question] What is the best practice for reschedule cards and update parameters button? about fsrs4anki

[L-M-Sherlock]

Update the parameters once a month is enough. For long-term study, there is no need to reschedule all cards. Only reschedule all cards when you want to achieve your desired retention as soon as possible.

[user1823]

• "Reschedule all cards" should be used only after updating the parameters or desired retention. However, you can use "reschedule cards reviewed in last x days" daily if you want to use load balancing. In this case, I recommend setting a low value of x (such as 1, 2 or 3) in the add-on config so that you don't unnecessarily reschedule cards multiple times.
• You should update the parameters only after you have done at least 4000 reviews since the last optimization. For example, if you do 100 cards each day, re-optimize not earlier than 40 days after the last optimization. Otherwise, chances are high that you will get worse parameters after optimization.

For future questions, please use Anki Forums (https://forums.ankiweb.net/).

[ratman-codes]

Thanks for the prompt answer. I'd like to ask one follow-up, why does it matter that you've done 4k reviews since last optimization? Doesn't it look at the entire histroy of reviews? curious how the optimization parameters could get "worse"

[user1823]

The optimizer can't guarantee that it finds the "best" set of parameters, though it can find one of the best ones. So, if you optimize again after a short time, there are chances that the new set of parameters is worse than the previous one.

If you re-optimize after doing a lot of reviews, the chances of getting better parameters increases. The 4000 reviews is an experimentally obtained threshold beyond which the likelihood of getting better parameters is high.

In addition, it seems that there is some systemic problem with the latest version of Anki that is increasing the chances of getting worse parameters on re-optimization. We are not yet sure what the problem is.

For more discussion, refer to the forum post: https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/measures-to-prevent-new-fsrs-parameters-from-being-worse-than-the-old-ones/38957

[brishtibheja]

@user1823 I accidently and part curiously did optimize the parameters twice in one day (when I started using fsrs). what should I do now or if there is anything I can do to mitigate some of the harm I've done?

[aleksejrs]

@brishtibheja The chances of the new parameters being worse are not because you optimized after a short time, but because the result is kind of fuzzy, so if there is no much change, it might end up a little below the average quality. Usually it's just a waste of time to optimize too often.