This, as well as part 2 and options info, is available as a PDF and can also be downloaded along with the 300 Kanji in 30 Days guide on Apple Books (free):
In this post I’ll cover the first half of kanji Flow’s settings accessible via Apple’s Settings app. These settings affect the entire app (as opposed to individual lessons like the in-app Options) and, for options also available to be overridden in-app, set the default for new lessons. I’ll use emoji labels to let you know if the setting affects the 🔍Edit view or 📝Study sessions, if applicable.
The first three iOS settings are totally up to you; kanji Flow doesn’t require them.
Kanji Flow Settings
What: Enable iCloud will sync your lessons into the cloud, otherwise they’ll only be available on the device you’re currently using. Why: You should leave this off unless you have multiple iOS devices and need to access your lessons on more than one of them.
📝Max Cards
What: The slider ranges from 0-100 in 5 card steps and sets an overall limit for the number of cards you’ll see in Study sessions. Smoothing tries to even out the number of cards that are due to be studied over the next few days. Why: Set a limit for the number of cards if your study time each day is limited. if you don’t set a limit, turning on Smoothing here will automatically smooth out the number of cards due for study each day. You can leave this off and still smooth your cards manually from the Study session pop-up menu as well.
🔍📝Card Sorting
What: Edit – New First will show your newest cards at the top of the list; by default newer cards populate farther down the list. Study – Random is on by default but you can have cards show up in order during study sessions if you prefer by turning this off. Why: Once your number of cards starts to get very long it might be better to have your new cards appearing at the top of the list. It’s probably better to study your cards in a random order but you may prefer to always see them in order if you’re doing Heisig-style study where each kanji builds upon what you’ve studied previously.
📝New Cards
What: You can turn on Sort Randomly if you want your new cards to be randomized when studying. You can turn Appear First off if you want to see them last during your study sessions. Why: I usually study from a list and like to edit my new cards in order the first time I study them. If you usually do your editing on the Edit view, random might be better for you. If you aren’t sure if you have enough time to learn a new set of cards every day then having them at the end of your study session will help you get to the cards you need to review more quickly.
📝Review Cards
What: The cards you missed or passed yesterday will Appear First by default but you can turn this off to have them randomized with your other cards. Why: I think it’s most important to make sure you review any cards you previously missed but if study time isn’t a problem for you then mixing them all together is probably okay.
📝Randomization
What: Study Due Variance will randomly add or subtract a day from study due dates. Why: This will help to prevent cards that were created at the same time (and likely similar to each other) from always being due for study at the same time.
This, as well as settings (1・2) info, is available as a PDF and can also be downloaded along with the 300 Kanji in 30 Days guide on Apple Books (free):
I’d like to go over the options that are available in the app (as opposed to settings available in Apple’s Settings app – I’ll cover those in the next post).
The important difference between Options and Settings is that Options affect each lesson individually whereas Settings will affect the entire app. Sometimes, there is both a Setting and an Option; the Setting will be the default for new lessons but you can override that by changing the Option.
Some Options affect the 🔍Edit view and some things affect 📝Study sessions; I’ll include these emoji labels to let you know which.
I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible and just include a short summary of what the option does and why you might change the option (and perhaps give some real-world examples of when changing the option might be helpful).
🔍📝Date and Difficulty are mutually exclusive which means that turning one on will automatically turn the other off.
What: You can choose to sort cards by their study due date or according to their difficulty rating. Why: You should usually leave these off and let kanji Flow shuffle your cards in a random manner for Study sessions but I could imagine it might be useful to set these options if you’d like to take a quick look at what cards are most difficult for you on the Edit view or if you don’t have much time to study today and want to make sure you can at least get to the difficult cards first. You might also prefer to have easy cards first during your Study sessions if you just want to get all the simple stuff out of the way as quickly as possible.
📝New Cards is also available in Settings. This option allows you to override that default setting for individual lessons.
What: Cards that you haven’t studied yet will always appear first and in order of creation on the Edit view but you can choose to sort them randomly during Study sessions if you prefer. Why: If you study from a list like I do, having your new cards in order might make it easier to enter new information for each one the first time you study them. You can use this if you always want things to be random.
🔍📝Fav Cards are cards that have been starred and New Cards haven’t been studied (known or unknown) yet.
What: You can turn these on (default), off, or only see these cards. Switching them both to only means you’ll just get cards that are both new and starred. Why: Star easy cards you already know and then turn them off if you don’t really need to study them but don’t want to delete the cards. Turn new cards off if you don’t have time to learn new stuff today but still want to review. Remembering the Kanji includes a lot of non-JLPT kanji so you can star the JLPT ones and then turn the others off. If you have a test coming up, star those kanji and only study those this week.
📝Study Style determines the order of things you see on the screen during Study sessions.
What: Study Style determines if you see the kanji first or the English first. Set it to random for a mix of the two. Why: You’ll want to see the kanji first if you’re learning to read or the English first if you’re learning to write. I like to do a mixture of the two. I have a writing lesson I use to sit down and study kanji with example words for an hour each morning. I take those example words and make a reading lesson (you can easily export a list of your examples to import into a new lesson) so I can practice using the kanji I studied by reading real Japanese sentences and review those throughout the day whenever I have a few minutes to study.
📝Kana Style sets how many taps it takes to reveal each card’s hidden sections while you study.
What: Alone means you’ll have to tap 2 times to reveal the card and either of the other settings only require 1 tap. Why: If you don’t care about studying readings (and I recommend you that don’t unless you need to for a class; readings come naturally with time and vocabulary) you can set your Kana to already be visible (choose the setting opposite your Study Style setting) or appear with a single-tap (the default and my recommendation – choose the option directly under your Study Style choice).
📝Number of Cards sets a maximum limit on the number of cards you see while studying.
What: Allows you to set an overall limit and a limit for new cards. These settings work together (e.g. 25 total with 5 new cards and 20 reviews) and override the default in the Settings app. Why: It’s a good idea to limit the number of new cards you study each day so that you don’t make things too difficult for yourself. 10 new cards might be good when you’re starting out but you might need to do more if you have a test coming up. You can set an overall limit if your total available study time each day is limited. Set either number to 0 for unlimited cards.
This was actually out yesterday but I was a bit behind and didn’t have time to do the notes, sorry. Anyway:
Example sentences from Tatoeba.org
You can now access a database of example sentences right on the Examples view. Move them into your examples list with a single-tap if you want to view them on-card during study sessions. I only chose to import the smaller database with examples for common words to keep the size down. Also, this won’t show word examples for individual kanji. That would actually require a dictionary database which would probably be way too big so you’ll still need to go to imiwa? for words.
Easier importing with automatic duplicate checking
You no longer have to choose the type of import and dupe checking will occur immediately giving you the option to import everything or just the new stuff.
Tweaked imports from imiwa?’s Open In… feature
Tweaked new card sorting
Tweaked card resetting
The tweaks probably won’t be noticeable to most but they should make things a bit better.
Fixed Edit view searching
Fixed CSV exporting via e-mail
Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause examples to show the wrong translation
Searching and CSV exporting were basically totally broken; they work now. The translation hint bug was only a bit annoying but shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
In the next version I’m going to see if I can get those examples from the database I added to optionally show up automatically if you haven’t added any of your own yet.
I’m also planning to try release some updated Youtube videos about how to use kanji Flow, Reviewing the Kanji, and imiwa? most efficiently.
Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see or if you notice any problems.
Updated example conjugation options. You can now use tildes (~), spaces, and new lines to separate possible conjugation forms and you can add an optional particle in parentheses. This will help in conjugating examples for grammatical phrases that are similar, for example: 〜た上(で) for verbs and の上(の) for nouns.
You can also conjugate examples that might have random phrases within the grammatical form such as 大して〜ない.
Added lesson markers to indicate if a study session has been completed today (green circle) or is in progress (yellow triangle) for each document on the Lesson List.
Added a complete Japanese character set; the app will now properly determine if imported text is Japanese even if it starts with a number or punctuation.
This means that you’ll now need to be more careful when importing; if you select “imiwa? Entries” when you actually have an imiwa? List on the clipboard, it will recognize the Japanese entries and import but you’ll also get some unwanted labeling.
Added the ability to search Apple’s Dictionary from the Study view popup menu and action sheet.
The first time you try this you’ll likely get “No definition found.” You’ll need to tap “Manage” and then download the Japanese dictionaries.
The next time you try it you’ll actually get some results. The two different dictionaries actually offer a fairly good amount of information for most entries:
IMPORTANT – This currently seems to be bugged and you might have to turn on the Japanese dictionaries every time you want to use the feature after relaunching the app. You won’t have to actually re-download the dictionaries; just tap to turn them on again. Setting your device’s language to Japanese might fix this problem. If this bothers you, you can submit feedback to Apple about it. The more people complain, the more likely it is to be fixed.
Added the ability to do a Google image search (explicit filter enabled) from the Study view action sheet.
Fixed sorting cards by creation date for study sessions.
Tweaked card sorting by difficulty.
Tweaked study date normalizing.
I think these are self-explanatory enough and not really so apparent to the average user but they should make things a bit better for those that use these features.
Added a slight margin to the Example view text views.
Added a check to prevent accidentally deleting translation examples if you hit done or back before inputting a Japanese entry.
If you accidentally leave the Example view before entering a Japanese entry the English entry will just get copied and still be saved.
The next update will coincide with iOS 8 and might include a new basic UI. I’m not really sure how much I’ll have time to do but I’ll have a better idea once I’m able to get into the new APIs and see how much work it will take. I’ll keep you posted on how things are going. Until next time…
This is going to be another boring post. It’s specifically regarding how the app shuffles cards and randomness in general but its also going to get into things like statistics and heuristics.
The short story is that new cards show up in order during their first study session. This is because I like to edit my cards from the Study View and I’m usually working from a list. If you don’t want new cards to show up in order there is a setting you can enable to randomize them. For cards that are not new, I use arc4random_uniform([array count]) to choose random numbers and a Fisher-Yates shuffle to actually shuffle the cards. Even though these procedures may seem to be the best and/or most standard ways of getting random numbers and shuffling a set, you might still notice patterns and/or the resulting shuffles might not seem random to you. How can that be?
Computers are not really capable of choosing things at random. Generally speaking, when one asks a computer to generate a random number it must go through some process to create that number. It might use the current time or some other internally-known condition (voltage, temperature, etc.) as a basis for generating the number. If we could recreate the precise condition or conditions that existed in a system when it generated a random number, we could cause that system to generate the same random number over and over again. That’s not truly random. The same thing is true of the universe. If you precisely reproduce the conditions of the universe (and I mean the precise position, velocity, and spin of every fundamental particle in existence), you will always get the same outcome (quantum fluctuations not withstanding). Even though you may think you have free will, you wouldn’t be able to change your mind if everything were precisely the same. Given the same conditions, you must always choose Pepsi instead of Coke. Given the same conditions.
I personally prefer Coke, by the way. But there must be some conditions that would cause me to choose Pepsi. I can’t really imagine what those conditions might be but if they existed, I must choose Pepsi. And if we recreated those conditions precisely through many trials, I would choose Pepsi every time. Get it? I would not be able to change my mind.
But, can that really be true? Certainly, you can change your mind and random things do happen all the time, right? Well, now we’re getting into a philosophical debate. What does random mean? Does it mean something that seems random to people and not something that is actually random in the mathematical sense? If we’re only concerned about things that seem random to people then, yes, randomness does exists. If we’re talking about mathematical randomness…actually, I’m not sure.
I think truly random things may not exist (again, ignoring the quantum world) but what we can do is try to reach a state of being as random as possible and call that state mathematical randomness. It’s just like circles. While we can mathematically describe a circle, in fact there seem to be none. There seems to be nothing in existence that is actually round. There are very round things. Things that are so round that they are almost truly round. Things like the sun – the roundest thing we know of. But we are capable of measuring the fact that it is not round. What we mean when we call something round is that it is round enough to be practically round. What I mean when I say random is just random enough to be practically random.
So, let us ignore the possibility that randomness may not even truly be possible. Let’s just establish a model with two phrases: seems to be random and mathematically random. Seems to be random will simply mean that it’s difficult for the average person to notice a pattern and mathematically random will mean that it’s actually approaching a smooth distribution curve.
When I implement a random function, such as a function that should shuffle or choose virtual flashcards at random, do I want mathematical randomness or do I want something that seems random to people? Well, wait a second. Shouldn’t that be the same thing? If it’s as random, or pseudo-random as it were, as it’s possible for a computer to be, won’t that also seem random to people?
Almost certainly not. Humans, generally speaking, are horrible at statistics. We do not have a natural affinity for it. What we do have a natural affinity for is patterns. We seek them out. Visual patterns such as faces. We see them where they do not exist. We see faces in burnt toast and in clouds and in mountain shadows on Mars. There are no faces there but we see them all the same. We also seek out numerical patterns. No, I’m not talking about those math problems from your tests in junior high school. I’m referring to numerical patterns that we may not even realize are related to numbers and/or statistics such as patterns in the occurrence of events.
There is a very good reason for this pattern seeking behavior. It’s so you don’t have to waste time and energy actually using your brain to think about things all the time. Your brain is an amazing piece of biological machinery. And like many other amazing pieces of machinery, it’s an energy hog. Despite what you may have heard or read elsewhere, unless you had a developmental abnormality or some sort of inadvertent head trauma, you use 100% of it at almost all times and it consumes as much as 30% of the energy your digestive system extracts from the food you eat. Actually, I’m not sure about that energy number as I’ve seen estimates ranging from 20-25% and heard seemingly well-informed people mention numbers as high as 30%. Anyway, it is the single most draining organ that you posses. That’s good because it makes you really smart. But it’s also kinda bad because it consumes a lot of energy. Because of this, it has various built-in efficiency systems that it makes use of in order to keep the amount of energy it requires to a minimum.
One of these systems or perhaps series of systems manifests itself as something known as heuristics. This goes directly back to patterns in the occurrence of events. It’s quite simple to see A and then B and know that A caused B. Especially if we see this sequence occur over and over again. A and B may in fact be completely unrelated or due to some unobserved and unknown third condition but heuristics might cause us to simply link A and B. Likewise, if I see A, B, and then C and notice some similarity or relationship between the three (for example, they’re the first three letters of the Roman alphabet in order) then I might have a tendency to think that something fishy is going on if I had been told that I would be shown random letters.
But is it really fishy? Can I deduce fishiness after seeing only three trials? What’s the likelihood or mathematical probability that you would get A, B, and then C randomly? Certainly, it’s not 0 but I don’t know what the actual probability is because I’m not good at statistics. I could work it out but that’s not the point. The point is, I can’t immediately see the answer or even easily find it after a bit of thought. I would have to really think about it. Perhaps even get out a pencil and sheet of paper to figure it out.
I don’t think that you can really figure out anything statistically speaking after only three trials. In fact, you would probably need to see quite a large number of trials in order to get a good spread. The more the better. So, if you notice that a few of your cards show up in order or near each other or in reverse order or whatever pattern you happen to notice, what does that mean? What if the same pattern occurs twice in a row? Despite the fact that you may feel like something strange is going on, it’s probably quite normal. Even unlikely things have some probability associated with them. The fact that they are not impossible means that they must eventually occur. If you really want to show that something fishy is going on, do a thousand or so trials, work out the probability spread that you observed and compare it to what you would consider random. You’ll probably notice that there’s only a few tenths of a percentage difference between what you would expect and what you actually observed. Which would mean…nothing fishy.
I could implement checks to make sure that the seemingly fishy things don’t occur. I could make sure cards don’t get shuffled back into their original positions. I could ensure that cards that were created within a short interval of each other or cards that feature the same kanji don’t get shuffled into positions near each other. I could ensure that the same patterns that occurred in a previous shuffle don’t occur in subsequent shuffles. However, doing these things would actually make the shuffles less random. It would seem more random to the casual observer but these arbitrary tricks would actually destroy the overall distribution. So, even though seemingly fishy things might (or almost certainly will) occur, I think I’m going to just leave the current implementation as is. It may not seem very random but I actually think that means it’s approaching the standard of randomness I would prefer to see.
I hope you’ll read through this if you intend to use iCloud. If you do not have multiple devices or if you don’t need to sync your files across your devices, you should select ‘No’ when prompted after upgrading:
If you accidentally turn it on, you can find an option to turn it back off at the top of the Settings app:
If you do decide to use it, your files will sync into the cloud and will reappear once they are ready for use:
You’ll only see the “Syncing with iCloud” message the first time you turn it on (or if you turn it off and then back on again). After that, the only indication you’ll get of iCloud activity is the small Network Activity indicator on the Status Bar.
It takes a bit of time to sync up the data when you start up the app on another device, so give it a few seconds to do so. If you don’t, you’ll end up with conflicts.
If you’re an experienced iPhone or iPad user, you know that iCloud usually works pretty well but, like all cloud services, has some quirks. The most important thing to remember is that iCloud only works as fast as your network connection will allow.
If your connection is bad or slow, file syncing and opening will be slow as well. Even if your connection seems good (But I got six bars!?) or fast (YouTube’s working!?) there could still be a problem with the iCloud server that you’re currently connected to or you could just be hitting a bad router somewhere on the internet that’s dropping all your data packets.
So, if you seem to be getting stuck when you tap on a file to open it or when you try to start a study session, restart the app (double tap the home button and swipe up and away), try again later, or just turn iCloud off.
If you get keep getting errors when you try to open your files, there could be a problem with your iCloud metadata. The best way to fix that is with a device restart: Hold down the home button and the power button on top of your device until you see the Apple logo appear.
As long as your connection is stable, you really shouldn’t have any problems. Just try to avoid doing things such as renaming a file that’s already open on another device. If you do something like that, you’ll probably get a conflict warning. Go back to your Lesson List to resolve the issue.
As always, please let me know if you experience any trouble; especially any crashes.
A new sorting option is available as well:
New cards (cards that haven’t been tested yet) will always appear at the top of the Edit view. Tested cards will appear in order of creation, oldest first, by default. Use this option to reverse that.
Tapping the Edit tab while on the Edit view will to auto-scroll to the bottom of the table.
You can also auto-scroll to the top by tapping the Status Bar (this works in pretty much every iOS app).
Apple helped me out with an expedited review to fix the New Lesson bug in the last version. You can now create new lessons. I really appreciate everyone that got back to me quickly to let me know about the problem so I could get it fixed asap.
I also added in new card shuffling as requested by Mugen89k. You’ll get an alert when you open the new version to turn on the option if you so desire. The default behavior is to leave it off and I recommend that most users do leave it off so that you can edit your new cards in order during study sessions. You can change the option at any time via the Settings app.
I also tweaked card sorting so that cards always appear in order of creation on the Edit view. I think it was kind of silly and annoying for them to be shuffled there. Memorized cards will continue to be shuffled during study sessions unless you choose a different sorting option yourself.
As always, please let me know if you notice anything strange or would like me to add something to the next version of the app.
It is out. Please update and try it. Be sure to let me know if there are any issues; especially for iPad users. I’m keenly interested in knowing if performance is okay on retina iPads; that’s the only device that I wasn’t able to test on myself.
I also got a new App Store review recently. Thanks Mugen89k. You mentioned that the cards aren’t shuffled and appear in the order you added them. Actually, only new cards are presented in order. Tested cards are shuffled by default but there’s a setting that allows you to have them sorted by creation date if you so desire. I never thought that someone might also want new cards to be randomized. I’ll add an option for that and release an update as soon as possible. Expect it by next week, perhaps. Just for you Mugen89k.
That’s right. If you want something in the app, all you have to do is ask and I’ll probably add it for you. As long as it’s sensible. New card shuffling, yes. Unicorns…probably not.
