Just a guess, but it looks to me as if the number due on a certain day is the number of characters or words that 'become' due on that day. Add to that number any words that you have in your backlog (ie. became due earlier, but you haven't reviewed it yet).

From my understanding of how it works (which is by no means a highly educated one), I believe each character/word has a set length of time before you'll see it again, that is attached to it after you answer it's writing prompt, reading prompt, etc. And since you don't answer 100 character writing prompts at the exact same time =D, they "become due," as stated, at differing times of day. In fact at this very moment, I suspect a few just became due....and just now maybe a another! lol. How long before you get to respond to another character prompt, is what affects, and is affected by, your retention rate. And other stuff, I'm sure. There must be a forum or blog about this somewhere around here...


My advice, regardless of how this works exactly, is this: don't let the due numbers stress of frustrate you! They're there giving you a heads up to say, "Hey, now would be about the right time to look at these again, before you forget them and have to relearn them!!" You just don't want these numbers going into the thousands! (like mine ended up doing after I took a long break from Skritter D=). Remember, diminishing them is not your ULTIMATE goal, learning the characters is!

One last thing that might be helpful: if the numbers get too much, try increasing retention rate and decreasing the flow of new words from your settings page. There's also an option of "Save me" in the "My Words" section. But you should really only use that in extreme cases.

Hope my little ramble was helpful :)

i skritter everyday and when i begin my two hour session with the setting of automatically adding word i get a count of 300 odd words at the beginning of my studytime.

then from the corner of my eye while i am skrittering away i can see the number of reviews jumping up and down.

at the beginning of the second hour i usually come down to 100 something reviews and then after one hour and 20 minutes or so skritter starts to add from my list...

so just keep the review number as a broad overview of whats ahead of you today...

good luck!
and keep practicing!

I think it works like this:

You have 216 items to review. These are now 'ready'. At 6.44 in the morning, you have had 2 hours and 44 minutes for things from that day to become due (the day resets at 4am). So, lets say, around 20 of them have become due in that time (the number is a guess, but just go with me). This means that the remaining 216-20 = 196 were things from the previous day. Or, in my case at least, maybe the day before that!

Now think about the 136 you have to review on Thursday. This is the total for the day. Some of those will be come due at 4am, then carry on until 3.59am the next day when the whole 136 of them would be in your 'to do now' list. But, above we assumed that 20 items in your 'due now' list were from today already, so it means that over the course of the day another 136 - 20 = 116 will are still to become due as time moves on.

At least, I THINK that's how it works. I also don't know of a way to find our what number my '20' actually is?

And... as new words are added, this affects the number due each day in that it goes up. But you're learning things!