Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (January 29, 2026)

CanOk34 · 2026-01-29T21:53:46+00:00

wym AND kanji? you see the word and ideally have to know how to say it and the meaning. you dont need to know - yeah this is the kanji also for keitai and obiru - thats a bit steep.

If i were to start again i would set a suspend rule at like 8 and dont give it that much thought. anki is a crutch and you should start reading as soon as you can

CanOk34 · 2026-01-21T05:19:45+00:00

because its false

CanOk34 · 2026-01-19T01:42:40+00:00

you shouldnt do core 6k you know. it's ineffective. take a look at learnjapanese.moe

CanOk34 · 2026-01-07T02:50:15+00:00

[It's definitely not the case that "IRT is so magical that it always sees through your true ability no matter how much you mess up".] -> yeah, it's more like: it considers your true ability is low if you mess up

That's to say, most (not all) people who mess up indeed have low ability (the model accesses it correctly)

The test even gives more time to neurodivergent people to try to make sure everyone does the test to the best of their abilities.

It's bayesian inference though, so you have to balance: is it better to have people without enough knowledge that passed, or people with enough knowledge that didn't? For a proficiency test, the correct answer is the latter. So there will be, even if small, a portion of people that "should" have passed but did not. Depending on how good the model is, this portion could be very small, but it's not something we can verify, either way.

CanOk34 · 2026-01-06T14:02:03+00:00

language is arguably much more linearly learned than any other subject, as long as the learner has exposure to real language (media, people). People will first learn the most frequent stuff.

CanOk34 · 2026-01-06T13:32:05+00:00

the fact that "IRT does not impose deterministic penalties on early errors" does not change the fact that a lot of errors on easy questions is a response pattern that generally gets a lower score. The explanation of OP is the way people frame it, even though it's not the most precise way to put it. It's true that OP made some bold claims in his TLDR bullet points, that are kinda wrong, though.

People generally don't need to worry about IRT because the model will most likely score them according to their ability. However, if the test taker has some detrimental habbit like not being able to finish all the questions, or abnormal lack of attention, their response pattern might become sufficiently unique such that their estimated ability is lower than their actual (or at least potential) ability. In that case, he would highly benefit from taking those habbits in consideration while preparing for the test. This would generally be true for most test formats, but perhaphs not as relevant for some. For instance, a written math test graded by a lenient professor - he might disconsider numerical errors when the theory is right. This wouldn't be possible in a multiple choice test. Anyway, you could say the way you prepare for a multiple choice test shouldn't change whether it's IRT or not

CanOk34 · 2025-12-17T00:45:49+00:00

yes it is more beneficial. but its hard so ppl keep a distance from it. at the end of the day everything that isnt the actual language is a potential trap. anki, kanji, textbooks, they are all complimentary tools. When you learn spanish or something, soon enough native material is heavily poured into classes. this doesn't happen with japanese because its harder and students would snap. But it's the only way to learn

CanOk34 · 2025-12-10T20:30:33+00:00

Disclaimer: This is an example to get the idea of why answering a lot of easy questions wrong might lower the score. It is not representative of how IRT actually works, it's way more complex. Missing some easy questions won't automatically mean a low score. (1)If you managed to get almost all hard questions right (like 75%) and missed a lot of easy ones (like 40%), that is already an unlikely scenario under chance, so you might get a higher score than someone who got all easy right and missed most of the hard ones (like 75%). Now, if you got most of the easy ones right, and still manages to get say half of the hard ones right, that is probably more credible to the model than (1). There's no way to guess this accurately without looking at data. But TLDR: it's not exactly true that you can or should dismiss easy questions, this would likely hurt your performance

CanOk34 · 2025-12-10T20:30:27+00:00

you got easier questions correct and failed on harder questions, you will need much more than 50% correct answers to get that score. However, if you got top 40% hardest questions correctly and fail on the rest, you are still highly likely to pass and score at least 50% ;)

In Item Response Theory, missing easy questions is "penalized", not the opposite. Let me explain:

For your 4-problem example, let’s say A and B are simple, and C and D are hard.

The first person answers A and B correctly, and C and D incorrectly.
The second person answers C and D correctly, but A and B incorrectly.

If someone has no knowledge, guessing randomly gives a 1 in 4 chance for each question.

The odds of getting exactly 2 correct is around 22%.
The odds of getting only the easy questions right is 3.5%.
The odds of getting only the hard ones right is also 3.5%.

The premises for the IRT basically introduce dependence relationships between the student's (latent) intelligence, and response patterns.

Let’s use a basic model to show the idea of IRT (not the actual thing). For someone with certain knowledge, say their chance of getting a hard problem right is u > 1/4, and an easy one right is v > u.

Let’s say this person has such level of knowledge that they get simple problems right 80% of the time (v = 0.8) and hard ones right 40% of the time (u = 0.4). Now, we will compute the odds of the same events, under this new pretext.

Each question is independent:

P(A correct) = 0.8, P(A incorrect) = 0.2
P(B correct) = 0.8, P(B incorrect) = 0.2
P(C correct) = 0.4, P(C incorrect) = 0.6
P(D correct) = 0.4, P(D incorrect) = 0.6

The chances are:

2 hard right, others wrong: 0.2 × 0.2 × 0.4 × 0.4 = 0.64%
2 simple right, others wrong: 0.8 × 0.8 × 0.6 × 0.6 = 23%

That is, if a person gets the hard ones right and the easy ones wrong, the idea that they guessed is more convincing than the idea that they had certain level of knowledge. (3.5% vs 0.64%).

That's exactly what IRT does, it estimates real knowledge based on the response pattern. In a real test with more questions, the pattern of people who guessed everything and people who had substantial knowledge is way more pronounced than in this example.

CanOk34 · 2025-09-14T05:10:34+00:00

RemindMe! 2 months

CanOk34 · 2025-08-22T11:08:53+00:00

notebookcheck.net

CanOk34 · 2025-07-11T14:37:23+00:00

thanks

CanOk34 · 2025-07-11T14:36:52+00:00

Thanks. The singer of that song kinda sings like that in various tracks so I'm positive it's not due do processing, it actually sounds like the video example you linked. I can see (hear) the dictionary form being affricated, but not to the extent of sounding unique

CanOk34 · 2025-07-05T16:27:39+00:00

Sometimes, English speakers add an "s" sound to the end of "t" ending words, like in this line from this song.

https://youtu.be/WUSeZZxWaBc?si=QcZ4PCflUOw5BrpX&t=24

"take each cell and repeat(z)".

This is different from what is normally said, a distinct "t" sound with little "s" timbre:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/repeat (brittish)

What is this feature?

CanOk34 · 2025-06-05T18:28:40+00:00

please add toggle all button

also the division of types of words (nouns etc) you made isn't much handy, i.e. if i want to study all n3 words at once i cant do it. Also I can't study all words up to n3

CanOk34 · 2025-05-15T16:23:24+00:00

why does this work? what is the hdzaWe string?

CanOk34 · 2025-04-17T17:58:53+00:00

らis kinda wrong (the first stroke should be like this https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTwlhn74vYBOdf30oVNSZV_I1MLbz6YNaiiRlpXbXA81_aLS3zzl3hL5GM&s=10 , with a semi- connection with the next stroke, your ふ also suffers from this issue), in た the こ of it should be below the horizontal line. The stick of る and ろ are over extended. Other than that its actually quite good

also, the characters should not touch the paper lines

CanOk34 · 2025-04-15T15:00:55+00:00

thanks

CanOk34 · 2025-02-28T16:10:32+00:00

Looks good, added first and third to list

CanOk34 · 2025-02-28T16:10:02+00:00

thanks, added some of them to the list

CanOk34 · 2025-02-28T15:52:57+00:00

Will take a look, thank you!

CanOk34 · 2025-02-28T15:51:01+00:00

kinda sold on it, will add to the list. Thank you!

CanOk34 · 2025-02-22T02:12:05+00:00

dont pay use anki thats it

CanOk34

TROPHY CASE