Is there really any solid research determining the "best" algorithm, or even ranking them? As best I can tell, any process to repeat wrong answers more often and the correct answers less often, and does so with some amount of increasing time delta, will work. But I have yet to see any proof that one algorithm is better than another.
Ali Abdaal claimed in one video that memories are strengthened more when something is only just remembered than when it is easily remembered, so as late card prompt as you can get, before actually forgetting. I don’t remember his source for that.
And there’s simply limited time, a thing which repeats wrong answers more but not as much as you need is wasting your time and a thing which doesn’t reduce correct answers as quickly as possible is having you waste time reciting things you know.
So there seems to be room for ways to rank different algorithms.
I mean this any process that you suggest is a set of algorithms. It would seem logically strange to suggest that when a method is not within the set of algorithms it will not work, but as soon as any method is used that repeats "wrong answers more often and the correct answers less often, and does so with some amount of increasing time delta" it will work equally well with other methods.
I would suspect if this does appear to be the case that there probably is an optimal algorithm to start with but that all methods chosen here decrease in utility if you stay with the same variables (repetition frequency of wrong answers, repetition frequency of correct answers, time delta) for too long, the same way there are beneficial exercise methods for getting specific results when starting out that need to be varied if you want to keep getting results in that area without a decrease in the quality of the results.
