Duome's % strength number

[Mòrag Chèarrach]

I've seen this discussed before, but I still don't understand it and I wonder if it needs a re-think?

I have finished the Gaelic tree and have all the crowns it's possible to get. I also have a "strength" of 90% and on past experience this is only going to get lower and there will be nothing I can do about it. I'm also recorded as having done 478 lessons out of 483 - but I have no way to find and do the missing five lessons. Similarly I'm recorded as having 3519 lexemes out of a possible 3525, and again no way to find the missing six lexemes.

There are 107 skills in the tree and according to Duome I am at 75% in 42 of them (and 100% in the rest). This will also go down (I mean the number which are at 75% will go up) and there is nothing I can do about it.

There was a point, about where I had finished the gold tree and was starting on the legendary crowns, that I had the skills that were only at 75% down to about half a dozen. At first I tried repeatedly practising these skills, but no matter how many times I did that, the 75% never changed. (Also they were all skills I was really good at already and practising them was boring, and took up time I could use better on skills I knew I wasn't so good at - some of which were showing 100%.) However, if I brought the skill to legendary then that did it - until it didn't. My overall strength went up to 99% at one point, but then it started dropping again. And every few days more skills dropped from 100% to 75%.

I stopped looking at the Duome page and concentrated on getting the skills to legendary, which I have now done. And 42 of them are showing only 75%.

I can understand showing statistics if there is some way for us to use these to improve our grasp of the language and winkle out parts of the course we still need practice on, but I question what use these figures are when someone with a legendary tree still seems to have things she hasn't covered, but she has no way to address that.

Moved from Requests to Troubleshooting

[John238922]

I'm sure that Duome knows more and better than I do, and I'd be delighted if Duome would post a good clear explanation, but here's my understanding.

"Strength" is Duolingo statistic: Duome just picks it up from Duolingo. Duolme doesn't calculate it.

Strength is a very rough and ready parameter. It appears to be based solely on vocabulary/words/Duolingo lexemes. Not grammar, not idiom. It uses some sort of "unlearning curve", with big 25% steps.

Where a learner tests out of some lessons in a skill, Strength does not recognise this, so a completed skill with test outs, will not show 100% Strength.

At some point, way in the past, it worked arithmetically reliably, with the then-existing set of almost purely vocabulary based lessons and skills.

When Duolingo rearranged and added skills, particularly grammar skills, which were scattered throughout the tree, the strength algorithm ceased to work reliably for the new skills, and probably also failed to recognise successful practices of lexemes performance in these skills to count towards restoring strength in the skills where those lexemes first appeared.

Strength does not articulate reliably with the cracking algorithm, but we know that that’s dodgy anyway..

Summary: its not a very good measure of proficiency and it doesn't work reliably. Make of it what you will.

[Corinnebelle]

I wonder if those missing lexemes and lessons have something to do with crowns? Maybe they didn't fit square into the crown system so some of them weren't used. That may be contingent on your progress also, if it looks like you know some stuff already, it may not teach you all of it.

[John238922]

Given that after the introduction of Crown Levels, nothing in Duolingo depended on Strength, so there was no pay-off in carefully maintaining the code, I think it was probably just sloppy programming.

[duome]

I'm also recorded as having done 478 lessons out of 483 - but I have no way to find and do the missing five lessons.

Duome didn't show misssing lessons for legendary skills, now it does - https://duome.eu/Morag_Kerr/progress - look for missing lessons/lexemes in Home, Animals, Sport, Phrases, Phrases 2 and try practicing these skills a few more times to see if you can get rid of those missing skills (sometimes it can be a lot more than once or twice).

[SweNedGuy]

Duome only retrieves the skill strength from Duolingo. That DL skill strength is a relic from before crowns were introduced. It is highly flawed and degraded skills at gold level cannot be strengthened any more.

There is an add-on for DuoLingo showing the skill strength for all individual skills, which gets even more nerve wrecking as soon as you find out how it works. DuoLingo is misdirecting your learning efforts by arbitrarily downgrading skills, especially those having only few lessons per level and those you have not been practicing : e.g. 'Basics 1'.

'Broken' gold or legendary skills are just another useless gizmo and don't necessarily correlate with a low skill strength.

[duome]

Shall we get rid of strength values maybe? It's the only easily retrievable metric, everything else would have to be calculated. It could still be more precise though.

[SweNedGuy]

Hello @duome
There are plenty of characteristics put in gray, such as the numbers of skills at 100% till 25% or the number of crowns of each colour, all of those in the active language panel. Perhaps the total strength could also be grayed as a less reliable measure, same for the individual skill strengths in the progress panel. Much for the same reason, golden owls (all skill strengths at 100%) are not a reliable indication of proficiency either: they could be dropped. Anyhow we now have the rare L6 legendary owl, which doesn't vaporize after a couple of weeks.

[duome]

Golden owls are just completed courses (L1+ trees), they wouldn't be dropped unless Duolingo updates those trees yet again.

[SweNedGuy]

Golden owls are just completed courses (L1+ trees), they wouldn't be dropped unless Duolingo updates those trees yet again.

Sorry, I was mistaken about the terminology. 'Golden trees' are dependent on skill strength all 100%. Obviously golden owls are there to stay unless - as you mention (and it happened to me) - DL adds skills to a tree and rearranges them.