The goal of giving grades at JPDrills is to give you an accurate view of your current understanding of the question. This means that grades need to consider your most recent history of answering this question more than it considers how you answered the question years ago. In other words, this means putting greater weight on your most recent attempts and forgetting what you did years ago. This is what we call your "weighted mastery grade", which is really just a fancy way of saying your current grade. Read on to dive into the details.

What is the Weighted Mastery Grade?

The weighted mastery grade is your personal grade per question. It gives your current level of mastery for that question. This grade determines if you're at the Novice, Proficient, or Mastered level for that question.

How is the weighted mastery grade used?

The weighted mastery grade is used in two main areas of JPDrills:

1. to give you XP for leaderboards, and
2. to let you filter your Question Difficulty.

Here's an example of a leaderboard where learners have answered questions correctly to get XP. The more you've mastered a question, the more XP you get for answering it correctly. Learn more about XP here.

You can set Question Difficulty filters so that you can focus your practice on what you want. Note that JPDrills' SRS algorithm still applies when the question difficulty filters are set. You're still given questions with the most optimal priority based on your own practice history.

How is the weighted grade calculated?

The weighted grade calculates your average grade for your last 50 attempts at that question. It puts greater weight on your most recently practiced questions. Here is the approximate weighting given:

Note that these weights and the number of attempts are subject to change.

Why use a weighted grade at all?

If a weighted grade wasn't used, then all attempts would be considered. This sounds good in theory and is much more intuitive, but actually hurts us in the long run. The reason is if JPDrills uses all your attempts when calculating your personal grade at a question, then it will never give you the opportunity to get a grade of 100% because it'll always remember your early days long ago of answering it incorrectly. 

Plus, even if you answered it correctly long ago, perhaps you're out of practice and are answering it wrong now. Grades at JPDrills aim to give you an accurate read of your current understanding of a question. So we simply remember your most recent attempts and forget everything after 50 attempts. We view 50 attempts as sufficient for gauging your current understanding now.