5 ms·

I bet there's a way to do this. ceil(log2(52!)/8) means it's basically 29 bytes of information you need to memorize in under a minute. The method of loci (htt

I bet there's a way to do this. ceil(log2(52!)/8) means it's basically 29 bytes of information you need to memorize in under a minute. The method of loci (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci) would probably allow you to memorize that quantity of information in a minute, but the real challenge here lies in coming up with a scheme to quickly translate a card ordering into a form suitable for memorizing. This is going to require some more thought.

ndr 14y ago
Xcelerate: you can learn the method, and practice, in the site.
ramayac 14y ago
Really interesting technique, thanks for sharing the method.
burke 14y ago
It's not insanely hard; it just takes some practice. The gist of what you'd do is: * Assign a word to each card. For example, the three of spades might be "pancakes", but I think people usually have some sort of digit-to-sound mapping (eg. three would be "s", spades would be "s", giving "sauce" or something). * To memorize the deck of cards, visualize a series of events involving the words you've chosen for the cards, interacting with each other in series. I use this technique to memorize grocery lists sometimes. If your list with "marshmallows, tomatoes, sour cream", you could imagine: * Walk up to the store. The doors open and millions of marshmallows pour out. * A 20-foot-wide tomato falls out of the sky and flattens all the marshmallows * You cut the top off the tomato and it's full of sour cream * and so on. Visual memory is a lot more durable than short-term memory (eg queen-of-spades, 3-of-hearts, ...). This kind of pattern is /really/ easy to remember. Building up the effortless associations from cards to trigger words, however, takes a lot of time.
bo1024 14y ago
29 bytes, or 229 bits, of information is a LOT. To put it another way, you have pick out the one sequence you saw from 2^229 other similar-looking sequences. Our brains are really good with structure, and the problem is this information has no inherent structure. It's like memorizing, not a sentence of length 29 characters, but a 29-character string of random ASCII characters. (Memorizing pi to 29 digits is a mini-feat, and that's only using 10 different characters instead of 255.) I guess that's why all the techniques people are mentioning actually add information to the problem. Rather than trying to memorize 7S QD 3D 4C 10H ... you try to memorize some structured storyline with far more details, then pick the information out of the structure later.

ndr 14y ago

Xcelerate: you can learn the method, and practice, in the site.

ramayac 14y ago

Really interesting technique, thanks for sharing the method.

burke 14y ago

It's not insanely hard; it just takes some practice. The gist of what you'd do is: * Assign a word to each card. For example, the three of spades might be "pancakes", but I think people usually have some sort of digit-to-sound mapping (eg. three would be "s", spades would be "s", giving "sauce" or something). * To memorize the deck of cards, visualize a series of events involving the words you've chosen for the cards, interacting with each other in series. I use this technique to memorize grocery lists sometimes. If your list with "marshmallows, tomatoes, sour cream", you could imagine: * Walk up to the store. The doors open and millions of marshmallows pour out. * A 20-foot-wide tomato falls out of the sky and flattens all the marshmallows * You cut the top off the tomato and it's full of sour cream * and so on. Visual memory is a lot more durable than short-term memory (eg queen-of-spades, 3-of-hearts, ...). This kind of pattern is /really/ easy to remember. Building up the effortless associations from cards to trigger words, however, takes a lot of time.

bo1024 14y ago

29 bytes, or 229 bits, of information is a LOT. To put it another way, you have pick out the one sequence you saw from 2^229 other similar-looking sequences. Our brains are really good with structure, and the problem is this information has no inherent structure. It's like memorizing, not a sentence of length 29 characters, but a 29-character string of random ASCII characters. (Memorizing pi to 29 digits is a mini-feat, and that's only using 10 different characters instead of 255.) I guess that's why all the techniques people are mentioning actually add information to the problem. Rather than trying to memorize 7S QD 3D 4C 10H ... you try to memorize some structured storyline with far more details, then pick the information out of the structure later.