Today’s Lessons & Lesson Picker

WaniKani Announcements
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I noticed today that the algorithm behaves differently for the same number of lessons if you do all 3 batches in the same run versus returning to the home page in between each batch.

For example, with a batch size of 5, when you start doing your daily lessons, it will choose the proportions based on a total of 3*5=15 items. However, if you then go back to home page after doing the 5 lessons (instead of hitting the button to continue to the next batch), when you start to do the daily lessons again, it will recalculate the proportions based on the remaining 10 items for the day which has the effect of changing the proportions and hence the number of items.

As a case in point, consider 3 radicals, 12 kanji, and 66 vocab outstanding to be proportioned across the 15 lessons. The algorithm will pick 1 radical, 3 kanji, and 11 vocabulary items. It will also try to split them up among the 3 batches, meaning the first batch will have 1 radical, 1 kanji, and 3 vocabulary items.

Now, consider what happens when you do the first batch of 5 and then go back to the home page. This time around, when you start the daily lessons back up, there will be 2 radicals, 11 kanji, and 63 vocab items outstanding to be proportioned across the remaining 10 total, meaning the algorithm will pick 1 radical, 2 kanji, and 7 vocabulary items.

Note this means that without even repeating the same process for the 3rd batch of 5, you will already be doing 2 radicals, 3 kanji, and 10 vocabulary items instead of the initial 1 radical, 3 kanji, and 11 vocabulary items you would have done by simply doing all batches in succession.

This seems like a bit of an oversight to me since I wouldn’t expect that behavior.

For me, I actually prefer the behavior that surfaces from going back to the home page between each batch because it results in a faster level up time for the same number of lessons since it ends up doing more radicals and kanji first.

It doesn’t really matter to me one way of the other since I can also use the lesson picker to do whatever mix I want, but I figured I’d mention it, because it’s rather unexpected behavior that I don’t imagine was intended.

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If faster level up is the end goal, then it would be better to forgo the recommended lessons altogether and use the lesson picker to choose the specific items based on that goal, would it not?

The behaviour described could be considered to be valid by design, depending on the point of view. If I do 5 or 10 lessons now and them come back at some point in the future, what is now the “ideal” selection is different since the outstanding pool of available items is now different at this point.

I am impressed that you noticed the different. Quite cool in fact. You must be math/stat obsessed. Welcome to the club :grinning:

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306

I just leveled up for the first time since “today’s lessons” was implemented, but I noticed that even though I didn’t finish with all the vocabulary lessons from the previous level (the one I just passed), my “today’s lessons” include radicals from the next level.

That is a huge problem as if I keep studying at my low pace, I’ll have more and more pendent vocabulary as I keep leveling up. How can I solve this? Will I have to select my lessons from now on?

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307

Selecting the lessons yourself sounds like the best solution

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308

Just like the rest of us peasents you will be going into “advanced” click on “select everything”
and the click on start every single time you want to do lessons.

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I feel like it kind of defeats the purpose of the new system, but nothing I can do, I guess… Thanks for the answers!! :grin:

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310

With the number of users that WK has, there is going to be no “system” that works the way everyone wants, especially given that many of the ways different folks want are diametrically opposed. At least the way things are now, each user does have complete control over how they want to tackle their lessons and can choose exactly those items which fit their desired system.

I do agree that a couple of additional basic configuration options for setting the default behaviour could be useful.

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311

I, for one, really like the new system, especially the lesson selection algorithm. It streamlines the lesson process and seems to improve my memory by grouping related items.
It also eliminates the feeling I used to have of being overwhelmed by lessons on level unlock.
I do lessons much more consistently now than I did before.

I understand it doesn’t suit other users’ habits, but it’s a good feature for how I use the app

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312

Yeah, I understand that, and I’m more than happy to see new things implemented in Wanikani. However, regarding to the matter, I’m not doing any specific behavior regarding to my study. I’m merely using the system with batches of 3, meaning, according to the recommendation, 9 new words a day.

The problem is that even by following the system, I have the forementioned problem. In any case, and just for the record, I’m not complaining. I’m giving feedback as well as trying to pick ideas on how to study from now on.

Thank you everyone!

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One factor (in terms of how it worked prior to the update) is that there was an option you could set in your profile that affected the order in which your lessons were presented to you by default. It sounds like you had yours on the default setting (same as I did - I think it was the default, but not 100% sure about that and no way to check now) to prioritize going through all vocab from the previous lesson before hitting radicals, and then kanji from the new level you were at. If I recall there were 3, or possibly 4, options in that setting that would result in different lessons orderings. I know that a lot of people used the setting to prioritize radicals and kanji over vocab. The recommendation in the default set of lessons presented now is a a bit of a mix between the two extremes. Reading the reasoning behind the implementation, it does make sense to me and is more balanced. However, it will not ideally suit the folks who prefer to live at either of the extremes. The OCD type folks that want/need to do things “in order” and finish step 1 completely before moving to the next step (I am by nature in that group) or the so called speed runners that obsess over how to squeeze each level-up to the shortest time possible. I do think that the balanced approach will likely suite the majority of uses and the advanced selection capability does give both of the groups on either end the capability to, as they say at Burger King, have it your way.

Since the update, I have been (mostly) just doing the lessons as recommended. Giving it a try. The exception being that I do not always do exactly the number recommended. I do as many as I feel like that day. Sometimes less (or none), sometimes more. When I do more, I am then having to select what I want and I have been making those selections from the oldest vocab first. I still feel the drive to do things “in order”, I can’t change my nature.

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Nice insight, thanks for sharing.
In the case this “order” has been decided by design, then I’m more than happy to try it out. Cheers

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After having used the new system for one cycle through my usual level cycle, I quite like this update!

I enjoy having the motivation of closing out the lessons for the day, although I do wish you could set batch size and total number of lessons for the day separately.

I had been using a combination of the old system with the lesson picker prior to this update going live, but I’ve switched to exclusively using the lesson picker. It is nice to have the fine control over my lessons since I tend to hold back on kanji at the beginning of level while I do radicals and vocab.

My big complaint about the lesson picker is that it won’t mix items together. If I pick 10 items of 5 kanji and 5 vocab with a batch size of 5 then I will get one batch with only kanji and another with only vocab. I’d prefer it if it just took the 10 items I picked then shuffled them up.

Overall this update is working well for me and I get that there isn’t going to be solution out there that suits everybody’s study flow.

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The algorithm you described is correct and by design. The challenge comes when a learner might do a mix of “Today’s Lessons” and using the “Lesson Picker”. As I don’t know which order the learner might do their lessons, it was safer to calculate the lesson queue as possible each time.

Like @mgrice pointed out it does depend on your point of view though.

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Just one thing to consider. You could avoid the user getting into really bad vocab delays by making any vocab more than one level behind the user’s current level the number one priority no matter what. It should be rare for that to happen anyway, but might be a good safeguard.

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318

Great change, makes the number of lessons much less overwhelming!

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I’d like to be able to configure the number of sessions too, 3 is arbitrary.

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320

I decided to let WaniKani do the lesson ordering for me for the entirety of Level 15, just to see how it went. Having now gotten through all “mixed lessons” (I’m now at the pure-vocab portion of the level), I’ll probably be hand-picking lessons for future levels.

I think having a mix of radicals, kanji and vocab makes a whole lot of sense, but the groupings have to be very particular in order for it to be effective, with related items showing up around the same time. I’m not sure how others feel about this, but having the kanji and vocab intermingled (seemingly) at random is a hindrance for me, not a help. I had to keep switching from “kanji brain” to “vocab brain,” and I found that made memorization harder for me, especially since the kanji and vocab were often completely unrelated to one another.

If the lessons were grouped so that, say, first you see the radicals in your lesson batch, then the kanji, then the vocab, that would mitigate the damage. So I’ll be forcing that by hand. It’s a little annoying, since I was effectively able to separate by lesson type for the most part with the way I used to do lessons*, but so it goes.

That being said, I really appreciate that the picker exists! I’m excited to see how I can improve my learning with it. I also used it at the tail end of Level 14 to prioritize same-as-the-kanji vocab on a day where my brain was mush. It was a big help!

* I’d blast through the radicals in one go, then tackle kanji at 10/day (and do vocab if I’d hit the guru wall). It meant I had mostly kanji until I’d learned them all. Then I’d do 15-25 vocab a day, based on how well my reviews went for the first 15 lessons (if I nailed them all on my first review at lunch, I’d add an additional 5-10 in the evening, and their first review would happen at the same time as the second review for the morning lesson batch).

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321

Hi! I don’t usually participate a lot in the forum but as a slow wanikani user (It’s been years because I take long vacations and I learn at the same time as my grammar and conversation classes) I wanted to thank you for this. I understand that for some people might not be as good but as someone that gets overwhelmed with lessons, the new number helps me a lot and I think it’s going to help me to advance faster.

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322

You’ll get one kanji and one radikal from the new level along with vocab from the old level. I go slow too and I really like it now that I have tested it for a few days. I just finished all the vocab from my old level and I’m about halfway through the radicals and kanji from the new level. Learning new kanji together with old vocab helps reinforce the old kanji and I like not having to learn all the new kanji at once. Just test it a few days, you might like it too!

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Yeah, I’ve been testing it for a while (still doing it). It’s not that I don’t like it. What’s more, I’m alright with anything as long as it’s a meditated method in order to improve our learning journey, and this is not an exception.

The problem is that I feel a bit skeptical because at my current pace vocab will keep stacking and eventually it might be a huge delay from the current level. But in whichever case, future me will worry about it. Thanks for your answer!

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