[Userscript] The GanbarOmeter

[Rrwrex]

I’ve been using the 4.0.8 dev version for several days now, and love it. The GanbarOmeter calculation and Expected Daily Reviews line in the bar chart have been working really great for me.

Buuuuuuuut, I’m already thinking about 4.1!

There’s really no rush to come out with anything better. But there is one remaining concern I’m still thinking about for 4.1:

If a user slacks off and doesn’t do all their reviews for a few days, nothing in the displays would nag at them, even though they’d be creating potentially exponential headaches for their future self.

Both the GanbarOmeter and EDR calculate their values from the SRS stage distribution of upcoming assignments — they don’t look at anything else. In particular, they don’t even look at when assignments are scheduled (only their current stage).

After going back and forth in my head several times, I’ve decided that both the GanbarOmeter and Reviews chart are absolutely fine as they are. No further tweaks are planned nor needed. (I’d understand if people are skeptical!)

I do, however, want to add some sort of warning if reviews start piling up for the next few days. I’ve not figured out exactly what I want to show, but maybe even a simple textual warning suffices.

After lots of pondering, I think what makes the most sense is to simply count how many reviews are scheduled today, tomorrow and the day after. If any one of those three numbers is greater than the target maximum reviews-per-day, display a warning. If the average of tomorrow and the-day-after is above the max, display a particularly stern warning.

It doesn’t make sense to go beyond the day after tomorrow as you won’t see any early stage items scheduled more than a couple days out.

Where would you like to see such a warning, and what should it look like? Currently, I’m just thinking of a text warning below the Speed gauge, but I’m open to ideas.

[UInt2048]

@Rrwrex

Where would you like to see such a warning, and what should it look like?

Probably would make the most sense in the Reviews section, but I don’t know how it could be accomplished without increasing the vertical space of the script… maybe as an aside to the right?

[Rrwrex]

@UInt2048

I don’t know how it could be accomplished without increasing the vertical space of the script

There’s plenty of room up top. Maybe a throbbing “Warnings” menu item that conditionally appears up top?

[Lupo_Mikti]

The beta is working out pretty great!

@Rrwrex

I’d also appreciate any reviews of the Help text.

I’ll compile any suggestions I have for a future message. From what I can tell at a glance a lot of my ‘proofing’ suggestions will center around word choice as many of the words used are what I’d consider too advanced for the average user (speaking as someone whose job involves user acceptance testing and attempting to write helpful explanations of things in our internal system + training videos). For example, you have the phrase “These ‘widgets’ display distilled information” and that’s already going to lose people because of the word ‘distilled’.

@Rrwrex

Sets the duration of the last review in each session to the median of all reviews retrieved

It seems this still isn’t working for me as my single-review sessions still show 0/0 etc.

Turns out I end up with a fair amount of these kinds of sessions because when I miss an item in review it’s usually only 1 item haha

@Rrwrex

First attempt at migrating settings between versions

This worked just fine for me, although I have to say this usually worked on its own when tampermonkey would actually update the script instead of me having to manually reinstall from the URL. But it’s nice to have it more guaranteed now. I was getting pretty tired of needing to retype my settings over and over tbh.

[Rrwrex]

@Lupo_Mikti

‘proofing’ suggestions

Please do compile any suggestions. It’s (mostly) just a markdown file. If you’re familiar with git/github you could even clone a copy, edit, and make a pull request: ganbarometer-svelte/Help.svx at v4.0 · wrex/ganbarometer-svelte · GitHub

Alternately, just cut and paste the markdown bits into an editor and send it to me (rw at pobox.com) and I can make the diff.

I despair if “distilled” is considered too difficult for English speakers learning another language, though. Just wait until they get to filial piety.

@Lupo_Mikti

my single-review sessions still show 0/0

Hmm. This is odd. The fix should be included. Are you certain you’re running 4.0.8? (Obviously you are or you wouldn’t see the Help text.) Does it still show 0s no matter how many days of reviews you retrieve?

I think I still have an API key for you so I’ll look into it. Can you cut and paste all the session info and send it to me in the interim?

@Lupo_Mikti

this usually worked on its own

It only appeared that way. A few releases ago, I added a VERSION string to the gbSettings variable stored in localstorage. Now, whenever I make an incompatible change to the object structure of anything stored locally I update the version. This doesn’t happen every release.

When I first put in the version check, I just reset to defaults if there was a mismatch. This release copies over what I can if the version changed (and just adds anything new).

---

Re: sessions with single review not getting their duration set to the median.

I’m mystified. I even created a test for this specific case and everything. It’s passing:

Here’s the test itself:

it("sets the duration of single review sessions to the median", async () => {
    // median(infinity, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 30000) === 3500
    mockReviewCollection([
      mockReview({ reviewData: { created_at: "2019-10-01T00:00:00.000Z" } }), // session with single review
      mockReview({ reviewData: { created_at: "2019-10-04T00:00:00.000Z" } }), // 2s duration
      mockReview({ reviewData: { created_at: "2019-10-04T00:00:02.000Z" } }), // 1s duration
      mockReview({ reviewData: { created_at: "2019-10-04T00:00:03.000Z" } }), // 5s duration
      mockReview({ reviewData: { created_at: "2019-10-04T00:00:08.000Z" } }), // 4s duration
      mockReview({ reviewData: { created_at: "2019-10-04T00:00:12.000Z" } }), // 3s duration
      mockReview({ reviewData: { created_at: "2019-10-04T00:00:15.000Z" } }), // unknown (30s)
    ]);
    const reviews = await getReviews(7);
    const sessions = parseSessions(reviews);
    expect(sessions.length).toBe(2);
    expect(sessions[0].reviews.length).toBe(1);
    expect(sessions[0].reviews[0].duration).toBe(3500);
  });

It first mocks WKOF to return seven Reviews (a single session of one review, then another session with six reviews).

Then it checks that there are two sessions, that the first first session has a single review, and that the duration of the first session is set to the median value.

Here’s the specific section code that implements the logic (and I’ve verified it’s present in v4.0.8beta):

EDIT: whoops copy/pasted the wrong code. Previous one only set the final review retrieved. Here’s the code that does it for the final review within each session:

export const parseSessions = (reviews: Review[]): Session[] => {

  // ... other logic

  // Force the duration of the last review in each session to the overall median
  sessionSlices.forEach((sess) => {
    sess.reviews[sess.reviews.length - 1].duration = median_duration;
  });
};

Clearly you’re retrieving more than a single session, so I’m mystified. Let me write another test where it’s the second to last session that has a single review (matching your case exactly).

I can’t imagine how it would affect things, but you mentioned you had to keep changing your settings. Could you tell me what changes you’ve made from the defaults?

[Lupo_Mikti]

@Rrwrex

Does it still show 0s no matter how many days of reviews you retrieve?

Correct, all of the previous days are also showing zeroes. I will send the copy/paste of the session info in an email to you.

@Rrwrex

Could you tell me what changes you’ve made from the defaults?

Ganbarometer: 100 - 180; labels changed to 遅い、良い、速い; rad12 = 1.05, kan12 = 3, voc12 = 1.5, app34 = 0.75, guru = 0.9, master = 0.25, enl = 0.01; no quizzes selected

Speed: past 7 days; 12 - 20 qpm; 40 - 120 rpd

Appearance: dark theme selected with changes to Track, Text, Fill, hlTrack colors

[Rrwrex]

@Lupo_Mikti

Correct, all of the previous days are also showing zeroes. I will send the copy/paste of the session info in an email to you.

“All of the previous days”? I don’t follow.

A value of 0.0 spq (infinity qpm) indicates it thinks the total duration of a session was 0 seconds. You’ve retrieved 338 reviews. The header was cut off in your screen shot, so I’m unsure how many sessions it found, but the most recent session with 10 reviews had reasonable spq/qpm numbers. The session before that with a single review had a duration of zero, though.

How many sessions did it find? And how many of them show 0.0 spq? This is very weird, it’s behaving exactly like you didn’t get the fix I showed above (but I can’t figure out how that could be).

I’ve not received the email yet. I don’t think I ever requested an API key from you, either, please send one if you don’t mind (you can delete/disable it as soon as I debug this problem).

[Lupo_Mikti]

@Rrwrex

I’ve not received the email yet.

Oh that’s very strange if you haven’t been getting the emails. Does your email client block protonmail? I will try again (both the API token and this attachment) with a gmail address.

[Rrwrex]

@Lupo_Mikti

Does your email client block protonmail?

My bad. It was in my gmail spam bucket for some reason.

EDIT: SMACKS FOREHEAD. I found it. It’s a stupid output/presentation bug in the data view. v4.0.9beta out shortly.

[Lupo_Mikti]

@Rrwrex

It was in my gmail spam bucket for some reason.

Ah, that’ll do it. I also sent an email with my read only API token on Jan 5th, can you check if that got caught too? If not, I’ll resend that email.

@Rrwrex

It’s a stupid output/presentation bug

I was wondering if this might’ve been the issue. Glad it’s been found. As above, I can still send you my API key for testing purposes if you can’t find the original email.

[Rrwrex]

@Lupo_Mikti

can you check if that got caught too

Yup. Got it. Thanks and sorry for the confusion.

@Lupo_Mikti

I was wondering if this might’ve been the issue.

It’s actually a bit more involved to fix than I thought at first. It also highlights an interesting but common issue with software testing.

I was testing with a low-level unit test. My app retrieves a bunch of raw reviews and translates those into processed reviews with a duration. Then it uses MAD to find sessions. Finally, rather than caching the sessions with all the underlying reviews, it creates an array of sessionSummaries that gets cached in localstorage.

The sessionSummary objects have a start-time, end-time, and counts for the total number of questions and incorrect answers. Guess how I was calculating the session duration?

The solution is to add a duration to each sessionSummary that’s the sum of the underlying review durations instead of just end-start.

The testing principle is always to test at the highest level possible. I was testing at the layer that creates the sessions, but not the layer that creates the sessionSummaries nor the actual presentation layer (which is really what you want your tests to focus on).

Anyway, I’ll have 4.0.9beta out before the end of the day.

Thanks for the catch!

[Rrwrex]

Just pushed v4.0.9beta. This is now the release candidate.

Changes since v4.0.8beta:

• Fixes (hopefully for good) and adds tests for the bug @Lupo_Mikti found when sessions contain only a single review.

• Display finer granularity of session durations. It’s still shown in minutes but adds two digits past the decimal so extremely short sessions show something meaningful.

• More styling with the settings form.

This should be it. If nothing major is found over the weekend, I’ll move it over to production Monday. (Help text improvements can be pushed after v4.0.9 goes live for real.)

[Lupo_Mikti]

It’s working! I should have seen this coming but it has immediately affected my overall spq taking it from 3.6 to 4.1

It never occurred to me my median would be around 1.5 seconds slower than how fast I usually answer a single item review, but that’s just how it is. Thanks for getting that fixed! I’d much rather have them counted this way than not at all.

[Rrwrex]

@Lupo_Mikti

my overall spq taking it from 3.6 to 4.1

Yeah, you’re right that it makes sense. Calculating session duration as first start time to last start time ignores the final review duration.

For me, it’s a nit. Most of my sessions are 80-200 reviews. If you have shorter sessions, or lots of singletons like yourself it has a bigger effect.

What’s funny is I went to the effort of estimating the final durations, even writing tests, then never actually used those values for anything until you reported the problem!

[Rrwrex]

I’m in the process of publishing v4.0.9 to production. For some reason that is completely mystifying me at the moment, it doesn’t appear to be loading the CSS.

Bear with me as I figure out why it’s broken.

[Hubbit200]

Was just about to mention the lack of CSS - good luck fixing

[Rrwrex]

@Hubbit200

Was just about to mention the lack of CSS

v4.0.9 production is now live and working.

The only important change from the beta version is that the help file now includes the name and version of the script just below the table of contents.

Top post has been updated. I’ll also be deleting the old, non-svelte version from greasyfork later this afternoon. The old 3.X version of the script has been deleted. Please upgraded to v4.0.9.

Sorry for the goat rodeo getting this thing published!

[Hubbit200]

Yep, all working now. The help section has a great amount of detail and examples and the tooltips should be very useful for new users.
Thanks for the update!

[Rrwrex]

Thanks for everyone’s help and suggestions. This is immensely more valuable to me now because of it.

It’s surprisingly helpful to keep an eye both on the GanbarOmeter and where the expected-daily-reviews line sits within my desired range.

One change it’s created in my behavior: I’m now self-studying everything in stages 1 and 2 before starting my real reviews (including radicals and vocabulary, not just kanji). I’m pretty sure this is going to improve my retention and not just let me go faster.

I should probably have made the defaults include all three items in the self-study quiz. Before I wrote this thing, I was using the item inspector to launch the self-study quiz and I’d just look over the vocab/radicals but only quiz on the kanji. I only checked kanji in the settings because that was my unconscious habit from doing it that way. It actually makes more sense to me to quiz on everything (I need more frequent reviews of anything in stages 1 or 2).

The defaults work pretty well for me otherwise.

[kiwicolin]

I just updated to the new svelte version and it’s SO AWESOME - thanks so much! One problem though - when I click on self study it says that there are no questions found. Do I have to have a specifically named preset?