blog-post-rules-for-designing-precise-anki-cards
https://controlaltbackspace.org/memory/designing-precise-cards/
To put it another way, SRS questions are prone to overfitting. Overfitting, in statistical modeling and machine learning, occurs when a model gets "too good" at predicting the data you train it on – it starts to treat random noise present in the training data as a meaningful source of predictions. ^overfitting
It's also worth pointing out there's likely information in that initial "description" that we didn't want to know in the first place and shouldn't waste our time trying to learn. Splitting out what we're learning into questions is a fantastic opportunity to decide what we need to remember so we can focus our efforts on the information that will be most valuable. Every piece of information you learn consumes study time that you could be using to learn other information. Choose wisely. ^choose-what-to-study
foo ^ineffective-question-causes-you-to-need-to-memorize-two-things
Either way, I am not effectively reviewing the piece of information I set out to learn; I'm instead forcing myself to memorize, in addition to the actual answer, what this card is asking me. That means I'm effectively asking about two things and making it much harder to remember the card, for no benefit – in real life, knowing what one of my Anki cards was supposed to be asking is useless information.
Q: Why is the Earth's rotation slowing down? A: Tidal deceleration.
Q: What gravitational effect is causing the Earth's rotation to slow over time? A: Tidal deceleration.