Tools : Mercy can be used to shift outstanding repetitions to later time, e.g. after a longer break in learning. It can also help you make your repetitions at an earlier date, e.g. before vacation.
Warning! Each time you use Mercy, you add extra hours of work to mastering the same amount of material! The extra workload comes from breaks in learning, not from Mercy itself!
To quickly reschedule outstanding repetitions do the following
1. Choose Tools : Mercy (e.g. by pressing Ctrl+Y).
2. Choose the maximum acceptable number of repetitions per day and type it in at Number of items per day. Alternatively, choose the period in which all outstanding repetitions should be done and type it in at Rescheduling period.
3. Choose Update, e.g. by pressing Enter. This will display the rescheduling parameters: number of items per day, length of the rescheduling period, the date on which last outstanding repetitions will be made, etc. (use hints to find out more about particular parameters).
4. If you are satisfied, choose OK. Otherwise type in new parameters or choose Cancel to quit the dialog box.
To make repetitions before a vacation period, you can shift later repetitions to an earlier period:
1. Choose Tools : Mercy (e.g. by pressing Ctrl+Y).
2. Click the checkbox Consider future repetitions.
3. In the Gathering period editing field type in the number of days till the end of your vacation.
4. Press Enter and compare the date to the right of Gathering period.
5. In the Rescheduling period editing field type in the number of days till the end of your repetition period before the vacation (compare the date to the right of the edit field).
6. Press Enter and compare the date to the right of Rescheduling period.
7. If Number of items per day does not exceed a realistic value (in your own estimation), choose OK. Otherwise type in new parameters or choose Cancel to quit the dialog box.
If you are an advanced user and you understand how Mercy works, you can choose the Criteria button to set you own Mercy sorting criteria!
Short history of items rescheduling in SuperMemo
In June 1991, a journalist of Computer World, Andrzej Horodenski, noticed that for lazy users of SuperMemo an option called Mercy would be extremely useful. It would allow users to reschedule outstanding repetitions after a vacation period. Just one month later, SuperMemo World released a new version of SuperMemo 6 for DOS that included the suggested option.
The first Mercy algorithm was based on a solid theoretical ground. The item sorting criterion was to minimize the drop of retention as a result of using Mercy. However, the choice of the sorting criterion was not very fortunate. It is easy to notice that an increase in intervals of short-interval items is more detrimental to retention than the same increase for long-interval items. Consequently, users abusing Mercy would pile up lots of hard-to-remember items that would recur again and again contributing to overall discouragement of the overwhelmed mind. It is difficult to estimate how many people got hooked on Mercy and dropped from among the users of SuperMemo.
A second option was then added to SuperMemo 6. It was called Wipe and it was supposed to remove from the learning process all short-interval items with a high degree of difficulty (expressed then by E-Factors). However, Wipe might have done more damage to SuperMemo than ill-conceived Mercy. Users would often pile up items with Mercy and then get them out of the learning process with Wipe. Soon they could see that no real progress in learning was taking place. As a result, they would drop out again with detriment to overall popularity of SuperMemo.
In 1994, a new Mercy algorithm was designed. The new sorting criterion: minimize the damage to the long-term learning process. The algorithm appeared extremely intricate but has changed Mercy beyond recognition. Indeed, it could be seen very soon that the option Wipe became entirely superfluous. New Mercy would be as abused by the users as the old one, but it would result in less damage and less discouragement. Mercy survived and was not removed from subsequent versions of SuperMemo. After all, we believe that we should give people a chance to decide what they need, even if they can occasionally harm themselves.
It became clear only much later that the second Mercy had a hidden snag. If abused frequently, it was able to repeatedly lengthen the first interval of newly memorized items (after all, they are supposed to be less important for the long-term learning process). This problem was compounded by the fact that all SuperMemo algorithms implemented in the years 1989-1996 were highly sensitive to delaying repetitions, esp. at the early stages of learning. Consequently, items that were dramatically postponed by Mercy and that would score well in repetitions would have reached disproportionately long intervals.
These problems have been partly solved in December 1996 by implementing the following features in SuperMemo:
1. removing sensitivity to repetition delay of the Algorithm SM-8 by indexing optimization matrices with repetition categories rather than repetition numbers (for example, a item repeated twice would be treated as repeated 2.4 times in case of repetition delay).
2. implementing new multicriterial heuristic Mercy algorithm that combines its earlier emphasis on minimizing the damage to the long-term learning process with adding extra attention to items that have recently been introduced to the collection.
Finally, in December 1997, Mercy has been enhanced with the option Criteria. This option makes it possible for the user to choose his or her own Mercy criteria. Hopefully, this is the end of the 5-year-long process of coming to understand of what really people expect from Mercy. The following sorting criteria can be balanced by the user: item importance (as indicated by the ordinal and the forgetting index), repetition lateness, investment (in the item), easiness (of the item) and recency of introducing the item to the learning process. The last one is particularly important when recently introduce knowledge is of paramount importance. Read more: Mercy criteria