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Arabs used the Abjad system for numbers before the introduction of 0-based counting systems. In Abjad each letter of the 28 in the writing system has a number.
by cies 5y ago
Arabs used the Abjad system for numbers before the introduction of 0-based counting systems. In Abjad each letter of the 28 in the writing system has a number. Like:
a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, ..., j = 10, k = 20, l = 30, ..., t = 100, u = 200, ...
There is no value in the position (like with Roman numbers where a smaller value after a bigger value subtracts it). So "cab" is 6, but "abba" is also 6. Now you can make words and rhymes to remember numbers. Saves you all the mental images of Sinatra kicking superman :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad
- moeris 5y agoThere's also the major system, which is probably better suited to English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system?wprov=sf...
- BeetleB 5y agoOf all the memory systems I learned from Harry Lorayne's books, this is the one consistent one I use. Not for long strings of numerals, but things like PIN codes and phone numbers. It's well worth it.
- johtso 5y agoI once tried to write a script that would generate the most efficient encoding of an arbitrary length number using the Mnemonic Major System. Definitely an interesting problem!
- mikenew 5y agoHa, do you have that public anywhere? That seems like it would be fun to play with.
- johtso 5y agoEdit: Here's a really well executed online tool that someone else made: https://pinfruit.com/ https://pinfruit.com/ ------ Went digging through my old files, turns out this was almost 10 years ago!.. and looks like I left it unfinished. I was using nltk to convert cmudict words into MM sequences using phenomes. Then I was basically brute forcing all the different ways you could slice the given sequences into sub sequences. Then the idea would be to try and identify the "best" sequence. You'd want to restrict it to using relatively common words, preferably nouns. Really you'd want to avoid any words that are ambiguous or could be easily confused. Even better would be able to find grammatically correct sentences that fit the sequence.. but I think it's unlikely you'd have any hits. Anyway.. this is the broken/unfinished code I found in the depths of my hard-drive: https://github.com/johtso/mnemonic_major https://github.com/johtso/mnemonic_major