Stupid Question, "card is learned if"

Hello, I have combed the instruction manual for this answer and I was hoping if someone could just tell me straight up. In Pleco, when I set a score to be a certain value to determine if a card has been "learned," once a score for a given card passes that value.......? I am assuming that means the card will no longer be selected to be reviewed. I am not seeing a clear answer to this in the manual, that or I am not looking in the right spot. Thanks for any help.
 

Shun

状元
Hi Forrest,

I think this has never been asked explicitly. I found that the following paragraph in the manual answers it best:

“Under “Learned Cards,” Card is learned if configures what criteria Pleco uses to decide whether or not a card is “learned.” This affects a number of different areas - the “Unlearned ratio” option for “Random” card selection above, the count of learned cards in the Statistics screen, the “Cushion unlearned” option in Scoring / Tweak parameters, and, most importantly, the “limit new cards” feature below.”

If a card is classified as "learned" based on the criterion you set, that tells Pleco you will probably know the card quite well, but you will still wish to repeat it from time to time. The distinction between new and learned, combined with the Limit new cards option, just helps Pleco to maintain a steady and controlled stream of new cards intermixed with learned cards, so you will not be overburdened by too many completely unfamiliar cards at a time. The goal is to make the learning session hard enough to keep it engaging, but not too hard.

card_selection.jpeg



That probably isn't all that can be said, but it's a start.

Cheers,

Shun
 
Last edited:
Thank you that helps. So learned cards will continue to show up in tests, but at irregular intervals? Is there anyway to investigate what those intervals are? Thank you.
 

Shun

状元
You're very welcome. Yes, they will appear irregularly, i.e. mixed together with already learned cards at random. It also depends on the other settings on that screen, and on how many cards in the category you've selected are already learned or unlearned. If, say, you have 90% learned and 10% unlearned cards in your category, and the number of unlearned cards stays below the limit you've set, the ratio of learned-unlearned cards should still be 90%-10%. So, on average, there would be nine learned cards for each unlearned card. (just irregularly) If all the cards in your category are unlearned, then of course you should only be seeing unlearned cards, up to the Limit new cards setting you've configured.

If you're still curious, I suggest you experiment with the feature and see how it behaves exactly. For each card you were shown, you could go into Card info afterwards to see if it was learned or unlearned.
 
"If, say, you have 90% learned and 10% unlearned cards in your category, and the number of unlearned cards stays below the limit you've set, the ratio of learned-unlearned cards should still be 90%-10%. So, on average, there would be nine learned cards for each unlearned card."

I don't understand how this works. I have fiddled with Card Selection a lot over the years but I have never been able to do anything which affects the number of cards presented for testing learned or not. I just tested this. I have a category with 3k cards in it. I have set 2000 points for being the learned value. There are 700 unlearned cards in it. I just changed the learned value to many other values, and I even changed the criterion, "card is learned if" to consecutive. It had no effect on the cards due. If the system is making adjustments based on a definition of "learned" I am not detecting it.
 

Shun

状元
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were already quite experienced! In this case, it probably depends more on your other Repetition-spaced settings, which will also determine how many cards you're shown per day. Because of the way the Repetition-spaced system currently works, you're likely to have a large backlog of cards that you'd have to catch up on. The Points per day setting could have a large effect. Only when you've caught up on the backlog would the number of cards you are presented go down. Since this is hard to do with 3k cards, I suggest you reduce the size of the category first before continuing your testing. As an extreme measure, you could try setting Points per day to "1". That should significantly reduce the number of cards you're seeing.

I have to add that I just read the Flashcards Reference manual, which explains it rather well if you read it in its entirety. I've always used the Random system and will try SRS again when the next major release of Pleco comes out.
 
Last edited:
I think that there is still a misunderstanding, and I believe it comes from my having neglected to tell you that I was always talking about spaced repetition. When you set a test to score and present cards according spaced repetition scoring, you are still prompted with the option of setting a "card is learned if" value in the Card Selection area. In spaced repetition that value has seemed so far to be meaningless to card selection. No matter how I adjust it, it never seems to make a difference. I was wondering if that is in fact the case. After reviewing the manual I was not able to see a clear indication that it was. And when you use spaced repetition on Pleco, the fact that the "learned" value is still there suggests it is doing something. Is it only doing something on other test settings? Thank you.
 

Shun

状元
Hello Forrest,

I'll try my best to answer your concern. I know Pleco quite well, but for the Repetition-spaced / spaced repetition features, I'm only relying on the manual and my own good sense. If I read the following in the manual:

"Score: A measurement of how well you’ve learned a card. Pleco uses these scores to determine how often to show you each card; cards which you remember well will show up less often than cards that you have a hard time remembering, and cards that you’ve practiced a lot will show up less often than cards that you’ve just started learning. Specifically, cards with higher scores show up less often than cards with lower scores in frequency-adjusted tests, and cards with higher scores are repeated at longer intervals in repetition-spaced tests; by default, the number of days between card repetitions is equal to the card’s score divided by 100."

I take this to mean that you will be presented with all the cards at the beginning, and only after you have been recently tested on a card (with the Last reviewed date that is saved with the cards set to a recent date), that is, less than the number of days the card's score divided by 100 (or 1, as I had suggested to try as an experiment) has passed since then, will Pleco temporarily refrain from showing the card to you.

Unfortunately, one can't change the Last reviewed field for a card in the Batch menu to simulate having just been tested on a card, so I'd suggest that you make a category of only ten cards, start a test on them, see if they are selected with your current Spaced-repetition settings, test yourself on all of them, then try a re-test on the same day and see if they will still be shown to you (they shouldn't). Would you like to try this?

In any event, I think an important takeaway from this is that if a card is classified as Learned, that doesn't mean it will never be shown to you again. It just tells Pleco you should know it quite well, and the Learned threshold allows Pleco to treat learned and not-yet-learned cards differently (to give you a good mix of cards you should know quite well, and new cards).
 
Last edited:
Top