I mused have missed something here but I can't find any information about the grading of characters in the popup window. How are they graded? Take this e.g. 囗 (harder). That's enclosure. Can't be much simpler than that and it is used in so many characters so i do not really get how that can be graded as harder. Even hardest is set on many very, very simple radicals. Just out of curiosity as always but the rest of the info on the popup window is very useful, this is the only piece that make no sense to me. Agree that toughness is an individual grading but what are those based on?

It's combining standard usage frequency with frequency in textbooks. Much better than straight-up standard usage frequency for learners. But it is still based on characters showing up on their own, so a bunch of radicals are artificially inflated in these rankings. What do you think about the ratings for non-radicals?

I wasn't sure what to call it. Eventually planning on incorporating data on how difficult they are for Skritter users, so internally it's the "toughness" score. Maybe another name would make more sense.

Thanks, that makes sense. Did just not find any info about it. Ratings for non radicals is great. That seems to be very accurate.

I am still waiting/hoping for a base char/word frequency non-modified for new learners.

I just tried to improve my understanding of that variable by looking at a few characters. A correlation with the 现代汉语单字频率列表 is noticeable, but mostly for the more difficult characters (not surprisingly, given Nick's method).

easy: 业/業 (130), 输 (939)
medium: 统/統 (264), 亦 (886), 浪 (1186)
hard: 灌 (2077),芒 (2251),胶/膠 (2170)
harder: 蔑 (2575)
hardest: 龌/齷 (4509)
super rare: 葩 (5158)
unknown: 尌 (-), 霝 (9827)

skritterjohan, it's not just for new learners--it should be helpful for anyone who isn't at the level where they're only reading newspapers and such, and it shouldn't hurt people who are reading newspapers. Really, I'm just correcting for the standard usage frequencies being based on "informative texts" by emphasizing the words that people actually study on Skritter (from all the textbooks, including very advanced textbooks).

@nick: Sorry I put that the wrong way and I stand corrected :)