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I have this thing where I accidentally memorize license plates in the same way you might accidentally memorize what car people you know drive. It's a completel

I have this thing where I accidentally memorize license plates in the same way you might accidentally memorize what car people you know drive. It's a completely automatic process just like everything else we effortless memorize throughout the day. And, I've never thought about this before, but the cars themselves actually don't stick very well. Bill says it so casually that I wonder if it's the same for him. I grew up near Microsoft, and it might help to know that until recently Washington plates for standard cars have all been 6 characters long in the form 123-ABC or ABC-123. On top of that there are a ton of common patterns on the road at any given time due to the way they are distributed. So they are pretty well designed to be memorable. As an aside: We're now on a 7 letter system in the format ABC1234, and that's most of what you see on the road. These don't stick quite as often -- I can't tell if that's the format change or if I'm just aging or more often lost in thought and not noticing the world around me or what. I believe they all start with A now, so it's not actually an extra letter to memorize, but I think the format change modifies the rhythm to the plate and makes it so it doesn't automatically chunk and therefor doesn't automatically get memorized. I guess trucks (before this change) have always been something like B12345D (where it's always B and usually ends with D, I think) and those didn't stick very well, either.

lotharbot 11y ago
When my son was 5, he would ask me if we were going in the "455 car" or the "378 car". Both cars were the same model and color, but he had the plates memorized. Now that he's 6, he has about 300 digits of pi memorized. He's also got the entire periodic table, and the song "Yakko's World" (all of the nations). Some people have an easy time with faces. Others have an easy time with data.
- samfisher83 11y ago
  Maybe Bill just memorized a few digits. So for joe it would be abc for sam it would be dab. Given he probably a had a few 100 employees 26^3 a hash collision would not be as likely.
- petemc_ 11y ago
  What inspired your 6 year old son to memorise 300 digits of pi?
  - lotharbot 11y ago
    he watches lots of educational and semi-educational videos on youtube. I believe the one that inspired him was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skf8NTEnrO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skf8NTEnrO4 though he has half a dozen other pi songs he watches as well. He also regularly asks me questions he's learned the answer to from videos, like "why isn't the District of Columbia a square?", "which countries in South America don't have oceanic coastlines?", and "what would happen if you tried to make Graham's Number but you used 2's instead of 3's?"
    - 2bitencryption 11y ago
      also he can fly, tell the future, and count backwards from the last digits of pi. Sure.
      - lotharbot 11y ago
        I'm disappointed that I don't appear to have a "flag" button at the moment. There's really no need to be a dick about someone else's young child on Hacker News (or in any other circumstance), at all, ever. To bring this back to the topic, though: yes, my son is an absolute genius when it comes to data. I'm not making it up to score internet points. I actually have a six year old who has legitimately reached 4096 in the game 2048, and who has a basic understanding of what a "limit" is, and who in the last week has really taken to fractals. That doesn't mean he's good at everything -- we're still working on pooping in the toilet, not talking in the middle of someone else's sentence, and not having a gigantic meltdown if his milk is in a green cup instead of a yellow cup. Point being, it may initially seem weird that Bill Gates memorized license plates rather than car makes and models, but that may just be what his brain handles well.
        2bitencryption 11y ago

lotharbot 11y ago

When my son was 5, he would ask me if we were going in the "455 car" or the "378 car". Both cars were the same model and color, but he had the plates memorized. Now that he's 6, he has about 300 digits of pi memorized. He's also got the entire periodic table, and the song "Yakko's World" (all of the nations). Some people have an easy time with faces. Others have an easy time with data.

samfisher83 11y ago
Maybe Bill just memorized a few digits. So for joe it would be abc for sam it would be dab. Given he probably a had a few 100 employees 26^3 a hash collision would not be as likely.
petemc_ 11y ago
What inspired your 6 year old son to memorise 300 digits of pi?
- lotharbot 11y ago
  he watches lots of educational and semi-educational videos on youtube. I believe the one that inspired him was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skf8NTEnrO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skf8NTEnrO4 though he has half a dozen other pi songs he watches as well. He also regularly asks me questions he's learned the answer to from videos, like "why isn't the District of Columbia a square?", "which countries in South America don't have oceanic coastlines?", and "what would happen if you tried to make Graham's Number but you used 2's instead of 3's?"
  - 2bitencryption 11y ago
    also he can fly, tell the future, and count backwards from the last digits of pi. Sure.
    - lotharbot 11y ago
      I'm disappointed that I don't appear to have a "flag" button at the moment. There's really no need to be a dick about someone else's young child on Hacker News (or in any other circumstance), at all, ever. To bring this back to the topic, though: yes, my son is an absolute genius when it comes to data. I'm not making it up to score internet points. I actually have a six year old who has legitimately reached 4096 in the game 2048, and who has a basic understanding of what a "limit" is, and who in the last week has really taken to fractals. That doesn't mean he's good at everything -- we're still working on pooping in the toilet, not talking in the middle of someone else's sentence, and not having a gigantic meltdown if his milk is in a green cup instead of a yellow cup. Point being, it may initially seem weird that Bill Gates memorized license plates rather than car makes and models, but that may just be what his brain handles well.
      - 2bitencryption 11y ago