That said, the standard practice (pun intended) is also a thing.
As L told me last night, “just because you’ve found something that works better than what you were doing before doesn’t mean you’ve found the best thing yet...”
Good question, I will try to be more precise. My hypothesis in the experiment above was:
The first attempt after the first win is more likely to succeed if it is made immediately after the first win than if it is made one or more days after the first win.
I’m not claiming the probability is high. At my very low skill level (I have probably spent 30 hours on Yousician a few years ago), I would expect that if a successfully played a song for the first time (after many failed attempts), I would have around 15% chance of success on the next attempt immediately afterwards. It might be very different for you.
I also made a claim that continuing to practice helps more than stopping after first win each time, but I did not suggest a way to test that. It is not clear to me what the best test is because the success rate might vary in the two setups. Here is a suggestion for a claim
On a given task, if you practice one day until you have 5 wins, the total time spent (or total number of attempts) on the task is less than if you play until first win 5 days in a row.
If you test your ability to perform the task one day after ending the practice above (day 6 in the first scenario and day 2 in the second scenario) then scenario 1 will give you the highest probability of win in first attempton the test day and it will also on average give you a smaller number of attempt until first win on the test day.
I’m less confident in the last prediction, because you don’t get the spaced repetition practice. Maybe playing until 4th win one day 1 and until first win on day 2 is better.
You could combine the two experiments above, so only after the first win do you flip a coin to decide if you are doing 5 times “stop after first win” or if you are doing “stop after 5 wins”.
The flip-a-coin experiment is a very good idea. Are you predicting that the result will look something like this:
Win, flip coin, heads
Win
Stop
Win (first try next session), flip coin, follow heads/tails instructions
vs.
Win, flip coin, tails
Stop
Fail (first try next session)
That’s worth testing, and I can start tomorrow.
Will be interesting to see if it devolves to this:
Win, flip coin, heads
Fail
Fail
Fail
[...]
Win, flip coin, follow heads/tails instructions
Or resolves to this:
Win, flip coins, tails
Stop
Win (first try next session)
Spaced repetition (stopping after win and coming back next session) is a thing, more info here including a downloable white paper with a bibliography of resources.
That said, the standard practice (pun intended) is also a thing.
As L told me last night, “just because you’ve found something that works better than what you were doing before doesn’t mean you’ve found the best thing yet...”
Good question, I will try to be more precise. My hypothesis in the experiment above was:
The first attempt after the first win is more likely to succeed if it is made immediately after the first win than if it is made one or more days after the first win.
I’m not claiming the probability is high. At my very low skill level (I have probably spent 30 hours on Yousician a few years ago), I would expect that if a successfully played a song for the first time (after many failed attempts), I would have around 15% chance of success on the next attempt immediately afterwards. It might be very different for you.
I also made a claim that continuing to practice helps more than stopping after first win each time, but I did not suggest a way to test that. It is not clear to me what the best test is because the success rate might vary in the two setups. Here is a suggestion for a claim
On a given task, if you practice one day until you have 5 wins, the total time spent (or total number of attempts) on the task is less than if you play until first win 5 days in a row.
If you test your ability to perform the task one day after ending the practice above (day 6 in the first scenario and day 2 in the second scenario) then scenario 1 will give you the highest probability of win in first attempton the test day and it will also on average give you a smaller number of attempt until first win on the test day.
I’m less confident in the last prediction, because you don’t get the spaced repetition practice. Maybe playing until 4th win one day 1 and until first win on day 2 is better.
You could combine the two experiments above, so only after the first win do you flip a coin to decide if you are doing 5 times “stop after first win” or if you are doing “stop after 5 wins”.
All good all good, initial results here...