New study mode

[Andras]

As far as I can see there is no real study mode, or no effective one in the current version.

I think it should be something like this:

Cards are scheduled randomly over a number of days (1, 7 etc.) depending on how often you want to repeat.
If you come across a card and you say yes, it means you know it and the next time it will be scheduled in the specified number of days (repeat cycle).

However, the trick is when you say no.

If you say no the card comes back after 2 other cards.
If you say yes the card comes back after 4 other cards.
If you say yes the card comes back after 8 other cards.
If you say yes the card comes back after 12 other cards.
If you then say yes the card comes back after 16 other cards.
If you say yes the card is learned and scheduled again after the specified number of days.

Any time you say no the card learning is reset and it comes back after 2, 4, 8, 12, 16 (see above)

This means that if you have a deck of 500 cards, your focus is still on what you don't know and not on what you already/may know. As a result you can study and not just test your knowledge.

Does this seem a good idea to you?

When do you think this could be implemented in the flashcards tool?

I used to use mentalcase but now it is overdeveloped, full of visual fluff and it's a CPU hog on iPad. (please don't make that mistake!) I deseprately need a solution that can hold my 20000 flashcards (and the collection is bound to grow). Your one looks good but I'm not happy with the study algorithms - sorry.

I need lots of repetitions and focus on what I don't know but at the same time review what I already know and only the above written algorithm can give me that.

[Ernie]

Andras,

I think my Spaced Repetition is quite strong and should be appropriate for you. I believe mental case's algorithm is similar but less flexible than mine. I have lot of customization options which I'll mention some below. As far as your suggestion to repeat after X number of cards after a Correct, I don't plan on doing this. Repetitions are made after a set amount of time, not after X cards. If you get a card wrong, it will repeat in the next group of cards (which can be 5, 10, 20 cards, etc.)

I have a concept of "new" cards, which is used to drill unknown cards until you are at least a little familar with them, at which time they start getting scheduled at timed intervals. You can introduce new cards as fast or as slow as you want.

First, I'd recommend reading about the algorithm if you haven't already since you have specific needs on how it works.
http://orangeorapple.com/Flashcards/AboutSR.aspx
If you get a card wrong, it's interval will keep getting smaller until you show you can remember it. This in turn will drill you on the ones you don't know. You can control the intervals using options. For example, "Minimum Interval" defaults to 8 hours, but you may want to go smaller. "Maximum interval" is 1 year, but it sounds like you want this smaller to force repeats more often for Correct answers. When you get a card wrong, you want it to show up a lot. My default is to half the current interval when you get it wrong. You can change this to 0.1 (10% of current interval), so that a wrong will get repeated much quicker and successively more often until you show you can keep it correct.

In summary, I don't think there is a need to repeat cards after X cards after a Correct response. If you understand my algrorithm and look at all the options available to you in the Spaced Repetition Settings, hopefully you can tweek it to your liking. You can check these out on my free/lite version, though it's a little hard to get a good feel for it with so few cards allowed on lite (trial) version.

As for as the number of cards, I will have a new version coming out in a couple weeks that has much improved performance. 20,000 cards should be no big deal at all on a 3GS or higher.

Ernie