Hi there. Is 15 minutes quite good for reviewing all 1000 numbers (images) from 000 to 999, or is there room left for improvement?
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That’s a little faster than an image per second, so that’s pretty good. (About an image in 0.9s)
It can be faster, but it’s about how fast you need it to be. Memorising numbers in competition is like runners in athletics - it takes training and consistent work to reach that level, and not everyone needs to run 100m in thirty seconds, let alone ten seconds.
In terms of usefulness, are you reviewing them in order only? I presume you are.
What makes these images useful is being able to access them in any random order. By reviewing them only in order, you will tend to make it easier to recall them in relation to the previous image - effectively, creating a subconscious link chain where each leads to the next. This is useful early on, to be able to mentally find them, but training beyond it will improve your overall speed in normal use.
The easiest way to me (without generating randomised lists with every number once, which is optimal) is what I call “striping”. Striping is taking the numbers in a logical but different sequence, making stripes through the set.
For example, every number that ends in 0, then every number that ends in 1, then 2, 3, 4, to 9. So, for example : 000, 010, 020, … 970, 980, 990 then 001, 011, 021, … 971,981,991 - and so on to end at 009, … 999.
Then in another session try as though counting up the digits in reverse position: 000, 100, 200,… 900, 010, 110,… 799, 899, 999
You can try the same again, but counting down rather than up.
Another suggestion is to train on them a little lighter by training on one or two stripes in a session, but keep a note on which you trained on. It’s a little more taxing to run through them in stripe order, so this saves on fatigue or taking up bigger blocks of time in one go. If you run through one stripe of, say, “ends in 0” and note you did that, then next time you can do “ends in 1”, etc, to be sure you cover all numbers over time.
Striping/striped recall helps make the images more dependent on the number, rather than on proximity to each other, which is what you need for encoding numbers quickly.
(Note that this won’t necessarily make running through all the numbers in order any faster, but it should after a while get the images to be quicker in any other sequence, which is where you’ll be using them!)
Another aspect is to train on decoding images, to improve turning images back into numbers, but I haven’t got a better training system for that than shuffling cards with images on one side and numbers on the other, laying them out in threes, then trying to recall all three before turning them over. Why in threes? I’m hoping that holding it in memory for a second or so helps to lock them in, and it prevents me turning over the first two cards quickly if I get stuck, forcing me to think a bit more - which I think makes a difference.
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I’ve been retrieving 3 digit numbers based on the shape of each digit in each number, and then while recalling again remembering the qualities of each digit composing given number, e.g. 3 is like a fork so sth has three sticking long ends at least, 5 it claps, 9 has a huge head component etc.
you can able to review 1000 digits in almost 5 min. Well, you can go faster than that. (If you just wanna find some specific digits)
Otherwise 5 min is enough to review all 1000.
How so?