Advanced Systems

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More Numbers

That's right, we're not done with the numbers yet. They're only just getting interesting.

Up to now when dealing with numbers, you've turned them into words and from there into images. But you've been generating the words on the fly, making them up as you go. What we do next is codify the words assigned to numbers, giving each two digit number its own assigned word.

Take this example:

Now you have a specific image for each number, making long number memorisation possible. 

People Numbers

Now let's make it better. A technique recommended by Dominic O'Brien is to make all of the numbers people. For instance:

• 99 = pb = Pierce Brosnan
• 88 = ff = Michelle Pfeifer
• 51 = ld = Laura Dent
• etc.

Note I've used a mixture of celebrities and friends, which is why I'm not going to put my table of these here. But it's not hard to see what going on.

Workbook Now go through the numbers from 0 to 99 and assign people to each one. Make them celebrities and personal friends, anyone who's memorable. It's tricky. Some times you just get stuck. Persevere. This is probably the MOST IMPRESSIVE OF THE MEMORY TECHNIQUES and it's IMPORTANT to get it done.

Why are people so much better as images? It's to do with what your brain finds easiest to remember. You are wired up to spot faces and people and to automatically remember details about them you would find impossible to recall for other things. 

People are discrete, there's none of that rushes/rush/rush nonsense we talked about earlier. People are ready made for interacting with their locus in a way that it is often hard to do with other images. And that interaction (ASSOCIATION) is very important for easy recall.

This technique can be made even more powerful through the addition of actions to each person. This is interesting. Give each person a particular action, unique to them self. Then when memorising numbers (a) there is another bind with the locus because you can see the interaction and (b) it allows for an even more efficient memory through using a person and an action thus representing 4 digits at each locus.

This is quite tricky to do however, and I've not got to that stage. I find vanilla people quite good enough.

recommended:

 
Learn To Remember
by Dominic O'Brien
former world memory champion

More Systems

Next we come to some new systems for memory. Previously we've created Pegs and Roman Rooms. Now we're going to extend these. First, pegs.

Very Large Peg Systems (remembering large bodies of information permanently)

So far we have a peg system of 10 pegs, suitable for memorising a list of ten items. You may want to remember more, and permanently. It's possible to extend the list piecemeal, but then remembering the pegs becomes as difficult as remembering the items. Short peg systems are really only useful as a system on which to memorise repeatedly.

But what if we want to remember large quantities of information permanently?

The answer is what I call a Very Large Peg System.  These are difficult to use, and I'm not going to go into too much detail here. 

Master Your Memory by Tony Buzan

The technique is simple. Take your large table of number-words (not the people), and use these as pegs in the same way as we have always been using pegs.

You've still got your ten pegs from before, the number-shapes. Keep those separate: they're for whenever you want to remember short lists. This peg system is for remembering large bodies of information.

So now you have a hundred pegs. What are you going to use them for? You could say, memorise details about a hundred artists, or a hundred philosophers, or a hundred pieces of information about the course you're talking or the book you're reading.

But then what? (Here's where we get to the VERY LARGE part)

What we do now is extend the peg system further. In order to generate more pegs. As many pegs as we could ever want.

We take the hundred-basic-images and apply a modifier. Let's start with ice. ICE = 1

Example.

Then 133 = ICE-mime. A mime in ice? What a novel image. Use this image as a peg.

Let's say FIRE = 2,

Example

Then 233 = FIRE-mime. A mime on fire? A completely different image to 33 or 133.

Example

I'll show you a couple of the pegs I use for artists. My modifier is singing. Which is what I have as my 100 image. (From Buzan's SEM3 system in Master Your Memory above) My 13th artist is Sandra Botticelli. 1445-1510. Painted The Birth of Venus.

Peg: singing dam (113)

Image: the beavers are singing as they build their dam. But sand is spilling down between the twigs and there are a bunch of people mooning across the river at a collection of cello players on the other side . I note that it's a rural scene and that the year in which the artist dies had a special significance, since it's the year that he became late sandra. I also see floating beside the dam a large painting: the Birth of Venus.

Can you decode that? Here's how it works:

singing dam = 113
sand + bottoms + cellos (celli?) = Sandra Botticelli
rural = 445 = 1445
late sa... = 510 = 1510

And done. Seem long-winded? Well it is more complex than anything we've done previously. But since this is information you're learning permanently, it's ok to be spending more time on it.

You now have 200 pegs. If you want more, just add more modifiers. Things with strong sensory connotations are important, and they must be things it's easy to interact with. Encasing every image in ice is very distinctive.