Happy Birthday, otterpop58, bootedintexas and low_fat_muffin!

It's a hat trick of birthdays! Congrats, all!

Happy Birthday, otterpop58, <user site="livejournal.com" user="

It's a hat trick of birthdays! Congrats, all!

Memory Class #3

Last night's memory improvement lesson came in three parts, the first two relatively simple and the third very expansive.

1. When attempting to memorize abstract items or concepts, it can be helpful to morph the idea into something more tangible & memorable. For example, suppose you had to remember the city of Montréal. Memorizing the idea of a particular city might be difficulty if you've never been there and know nothing about it. Instead, morph the idea of Montréal into similar words like "Mount Royal," perhaps imagining a mountain with a crown. If you can remember a mountain with the ridiculous image of a crown on it, you can remember Montréal.

2. Last week's class was about memorizing an ordered list of items. If the list is short enough (say, 10 items or less), it might be useful to use parts of your body as an index list, working head to toe. Associate the first time on the list with, say, your hair, the second with your nose or ears, the third with your mouth, etc., again using some silly or exaggerated imagery to retain the link. To remember the list, simply skip to the appropriate limb or segment, then recall the target item.

3. This is the real meat of this week's lesson: remembering long lists of numbers. And it's not the easiest thing to do.

The first test was to memorize a 20 digit number written on the blackboard: 91852719521639092112. I could remember it entirely without this week's lesson, but I'm admittedly a freak that way.

Here's the method:
i) Each digit has a sound association based on this look-up table:
0 = s or z
1 = t or d
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = j, sh or ch
7 = k
8 = f or v
9 = p or b

ii) From the larger number, use the phonetic system above to assemble words which, hopefully, can be assembled into a phrase or sentence which would be vastly more memorable.

iii) To reconstruct the original number, decode the sounds of the words, then assemble the digits.

Care must be taken with the selection of words: they must contain no accidental insertions of s, z, t, d, etc., lest our decoding then accidentally includes extra digits. We're also concerned only with how a word sounds, not how it is spelled: the word "salmon" for example has an "l" but it is silent so we get 132, not 1532 from the decoding.

The sample 20 digit number above can be encoded as "a beautiful naked blond jumps up and down," a phrase more easily remembered than the original number.

What this course is quickly teaching me isn't necessarily how I can improve my memory but how much my regular imagination really sucks. Assembling whole words out of the consonant sounds is brutally difficult for me, while kent4str seems to do it by accident (the bitch).

Practice, practice, practice...

Memory Class #3

Last night's memory improvement lesson came in three parts, the first two relatively simple and the third very expansive.

1. When attempting to memorize abstract items or concepts, it can be helpful to morph the idea into something more tangible & memorable. For example, suppose you had to remember the city of Montréal. Memorizing the idea of a particular city might be difficulty if you've never been there and know nothing about it. Instead, morph the idea of Montréal into similar words like "Mount Royal," perhaps imagining a mountain with a crown. If you can remember a mountain with the ridiculous image of a crown on it, you can remember Montréal.

2. Last week's class was about memorizing an ordered list of items. If the list is short enough (say, 10 items or less), it might be useful to use parts of your body as an index list, working head to toe. Associate the first time on the list with, say, your hair, the second with your nose or ears, the third with your mouth, etc., again using some silly or exaggerated imagery to retain the link. To remember the list, simply skip to the appropriate limb or segment, then recall the target item.

3. This is the real meat of this week's lesson: remembering long lists of numbers. And it's not the easiest thing to do.

The first test was to memorize a 20 digit number written on the blackboard: 91852719521639092112. I could remember it entirely without this week's lesson, but I'm admittedly a freak that way.

Here's the method:
i) Each digit has a sound association based on this look-up table:
0 = s or z
1 = t or d
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = j, sh or ch
7 = k
8 = f or v
9 = p or b

ii) From the larger number, use the phonetic system above to assemble words which, hopefully, can be assembled into a phrase or sentence which would be vastly more memorable.

iii) To reconstruct the original number, decode the sounds of the words, then assemble the digits.

Care must be taken with the selection of words: they must contain no accidental insertions of s, z, t, d, etc., lest our decoding then accidentally includes extra digits. We're also concerned only with how a word sounds, not how it is spelled: the word "salmon" for example has an "l" but it is silent so we get 132, not 1532 from the decoding.

The sample 20 digit number above can be encoded as "a beautiful naked blond jumps up and down," a phrase more easily remembered than the original number.

What this course is quickly teaching me isn't necessarily how I can improve my memory but how much my regular imagination really sucks. Assembling whole words out of the consonant sounds is brutally difficult for me, while kent4str seems to do it by accident (the bitch).

Practice, practice, practice...

A Small Consolation

If all else fails, the day always feels better after lunch at Five Guys Burgers & Fries.

There has to be some consolation for having to work in Reston, VA.

*burp*

A Small Consolation

If all else fails, the day always feels better after lunch at Five Guys Burgers & Fries.

There has to be some consolation for having to work in Reston, VA.

*burp*