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When I learned the memory palace technique I practiced it by memorizing decks of cards. My fastest memorize & recall time was about 10 minutes, which isn't ver

by Timpy 6y ago

When I learned the memory palace technique I practiced it by memorizing decks of cards. My fastest memorize & recall time was about 10 minutes, which isn't very fast compared to a lot who use this technique. I also memorized the population of each country, which makes me seem more knowledgable than I am about geo-politics. It's a good brain exercise, and mental walks through these memory palaces are in my opinion a great use of my idle time when I'm stuck waiting in line or something. Much better than draining my life energy into internet novelty on my phone these days.

IndySun 6y ago
Did you use the memory palace technique to remember the populations? How so? Can you give a small example?
- Timpy 6y ago
  I was introduced to this from reading Moonkwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, and there's a few communities online you can find with a little searching. Here's an example: The technique is known as PAO (Person, Action, Object). Each 2 digit number has a unique Person/Action/Object combo. At the time wrote my own PAO I was entrenched in a foreign language that puts the verb at the end of the sentence, so I forever think Person/Object/Action for this system now but that's not a big deal, you could conceivably use any order you want as long as you're consistent. An example: the number 23 makes me think of Michael Jordan, so I assigned Michael Jordan/Basketball/Slam Dunk to the number 23. 84 is Winston Smith/Pen/Write in a Diary. 01 is Frodo/the One Ring/Become invisible. To remember the number 842301 you parse the number into 2 digit strings 84/23/01 and you replace them with your POA to create a memorable mnemonic. Winston Smith putting a basketball on his finger and turning invisible. This one mnemonic is information dense, it has 6 digits. Create 17 of these and put them in your memory palace and you've memorized the first 102 digits of pi. To memorize populations of countries I replaced the Person part of the mnemonic with some person from that country. For Russia it was Putin, for Mexico it was a Mexican friend of mine. My goal was to remember how many millions of people; the only exceptions on the list were China and India which had billions but that was easy enough to remember without a uniform mnemonic. Russia has 146 million people. Putin/1/46. My number 01 is Frodo, 46 is the Hulk. Putin using the one ring to "hulk smash" St. Basil's Cathedral. Because the memory palace is ordinal it was also easy for me to rattle off things like "Russia's the 9th most populated country in the world".
  - IndySun 6y ago
    Thank you and wow! The first read of that reply was hard work, the second less so, the third seemed almost to make sense. I'm going to have to get this book - or start trying....

by Timpy 6y ago

IndySun 6y ago

Did you use the memory palace technique to remember the populations? How so? Can you give a small example?

Timpy 6y ago
I was introduced to this from reading Moonkwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, and there's a few communities online you can find with a little searching. Here's an example: The technique is known as PAO (Person, Action, Object). Each 2 digit number has a unique Person/Action/Object combo. At the time wrote my own PAO I was entrenched in a foreign language that puts the verb at the end of the sentence, so I forever think Person/Object/Action for this system now but that's not a big deal, you could conceivably use any order you want as long as you're consistent. An example: the number 23 makes me think of Michael Jordan, so I assigned Michael Jordan/Basketball/Slam Dunk to the number 23. 84 is Winston Smith/Pen/Write in a Diary. 01 is Frodo/the One Ring/Become invisible. To remember the number 842301 you parse the number into 2 digit strings 84/23/01 and you replace them with your POA to create a memorable mnemonic. Winston Smith putting a basketball on his finger and turning invisible. This one mnemonic is information dense, it has 6 digits. Create 17 of these and put them in your memory palace and you've memorized the first 102 digits of pi. To memorize populations of countries I replaced the Person part of the mnemonic with some person from that country. For Russia it was Putin, for Mexico it was a Mexican friend of mine. My goal was to remember how many millions of people; the only exceptions on the list were China and India which had billions but that was easy enough to remember without a uniform mnemonic. Russia has 146 million people. Putin/1/46. My number 01 is Frodo, 46 is the Hulk. Putin using the one ring to "hulk smash" St. Basil's Cathedral. Because the memory palace is ordinal it was also easy for me to rattle off things like "Russia's the 9th most populated country in the world".
- IndySun 6y ago
  Thank you and wow! The first read of that reply was hard work, the second less so, the third seemed almost to make sense. I'm going to have to get this book - or start trying....