Is it possible in future for addition of the new event Binary digits in memory league?just asking …how it would be if possible.
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I dislike this idea. This would give strong Numbers players an edge in 2 events.
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Yes but i thought like there’s a possibility of making errors if the binaries are more,so that would be interesting, that’s what I thought
And i want to add another funny thing
My pb in official competition
Numbers 5 min 352
Binary 5 min 384 lol 
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There are multiple lengthy discussions on this topic on this forum. Maybe visit those first?
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Personally I’d like to see more encouragement of real-world applications of memory sports. For example, memorizing case-sensitive alpha-numerics would be useful for memorizing short URLs, device ID codes, wi-fi passwords etc.
It’s important to remember that we are a really niche community. Having more real-world use-cases can produce more interest in memory sports by increasing the chances that people will see other people using these skills in the real world, or by making the sport more appealing for someone to learn.
There have also been recent discussions about int. names vs national names. Although many argue that international names is more balanced competitively, I think it’s really important to remember that national names is much more practical to the average user which can draw more interest from newcomers.
Binary Digits is quite niche and already available on other platforms for those that want it. But adding new sports could push the community forwards by forcing people to innovate in new ways.
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This is why I’ve been championing for a hybrid event for years now. I’ve suggested it to the ML staff and they ended up using it as a surprise event at the Worlds last year (not sure if they got the idea from me or not).
The event I thought up, as a response to folks who wanted the traditional dates even in ML is a “ML Dates” event, but it’s like a hybrid of Images and Dates. We use the dates range from the traditional event (1000-2099) and pair the year with a random image (as opposed to a written event like in the traditional format). A written description takes too long to read and isn’t a good format for ML, so using an image from the already existing images database is a good solution. It still favours folks who are good at numbers but I think it’d be great as a regular event.
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It should not be a part of the main 5 (6) events. It is definetly something fun, that can be part of Occasionally, like 1 week Surprise event opening, that could be a thing over here at Memory League
On Competitions binary is also welcomed in Surprise events. It has been played out ( to some degree) like Binary Words that you memorize.
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We also have 2 Names disciplines and we were able to solve that mostly (aside from tiebreaks) with a rule that one person could only pick either Names or International Names. So why shouldn’t we include Binaries with a rule similar to this?
But I think you’re safe of Binaries. I’ve been wishing for Binaries on ML years ago. Others as well. Since nothing happened so far I’m not really expecting anything anymore in this direction.
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Fair point.
Admittedly I would hate to see it, but it’s a fair point.
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Binary would also be kind of weird from the POV of scoring - a core mechanic of ML that distinguishes it from other formats is that you do not get penalised for errors. If you’d apply the same mechanic to Binary, you would expect to be able to score at least half of the given binaries each time, simply by random guessing.
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True. Often a match could come down to guessing where as a each number is 10%, each binary is 50%.
But also Images/Cards can often come down to a 50% guess.
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I’m with Donny on this one. I wouldn’t like to be forced to practice it, it feels like a bit of a useless skill… (although you could argue that cards is also fairly useless for most people. But cards does at least have some real-world value).
That being said, I would really like to see binary digits added as a for-fun / non-tournament event simply for those who would like to practice it. Separating which games are available on the website and which games are used in tournaments could open a lot of doors for ML.
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That’s true, but if designed as a speed-crucial disciplines where people stop sub 20 seconds just like in Numbers, then it would only matter significantly for beginners, who are yet to succeed in 60 seconds successfully.
Also scoring could be made somewhat different to account for that. For example you could consider about lumping 3 digits together as an entity as usually a 3 digit combination stands for one digit in Numbers. Then if only one digit of those three is wrong, the whole 3digit entity counts as wrong and your chances of guessing correct would be similar to the Numbers discipline (8 combinations to choose from compared to 10).
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I understand your point of not wanting to have to train for Binaries for that reason. That is why, excluded for rules and other factors, I like Cards the least. But here I see it oppsedly different from you. I’ve never been able to make use of Cards in real life, other than in different Games, which I don’t consider that much as real life. It’s basically converting from one game to another. If you have other application ideas for a Card system please tell me. I would love to get more out of Cards. Binaries however you can apply to real life, it’s just that most people aren’t used to it because rarely it’s very apparent. So you basically have to use your creativity for that and rephrase information.
A typical thing that is often used to promote memory technics in media for instance is shopping lists and how you can use your word technis to memorize them. But think about it in a longer and more advanced term. If you are a person who often has very much the same items to buy in a grocery store you can for example turn this into a Binary task where for an item needed you use 1 and for an item not needed you use 0. You gotta combine that with your groceries placed in order on a journey. And I would strongly recommend placing them on your journey in the very order you encounter them in the supermarket. (However you’ll get really angry at the supermarket when they rearrange these positions in the supermarket 
so you better find a conservative supermarket which doesn’t make such changes typically to your knowledge). Often you don’t even need to place down your binary images on a journey. Let’s say there is 24 typical items, you’d only have 4 images in a small system. If you’d use by bigger system it would only even be 3. If you’re interested in learning stuff, there is at least some knowledge you can also phrase in Binary style as long as you can formulate or reduce knowledge to a two option level. So pick yourself a category of knowledge, come up with right or wrong questions. i.e. This country is part of the EU, this country has a male head of state, this country lies on the coast etc. The thing is, usually when you can apply a Binary system, you can also apply other systems and while it is basically always more obvious how you can apply other systems they are not always a better solution.
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Same for me.
Here are the some binary uses according to me…
1 • Any time when you have to choose between two things, you can use there binary numbers.
We can use binary to memorize left & right direction too.
Left - 0
Right - 1
Which person we encounter first
Woman - 0
Male - 1
You picked a ball which is black & throw it , and you picked a ball and throw it.
This going on…
Black - 0
White - 1
Right & wrong
Wrong - 0
Right - 1
And so on…
2 • you could use binary digits to memorize the Braille alphabets.
3 • If you have a coding background, you can use binary there too.
And so on…
Now when it comes to cards, sorry but I am still unaware except card magics where to use it… 
(and for the fact I don’t even think to do cards magic, there is any need of card memorization skills either)
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You need a binary system to memorize if you met a man or woman? 
I like your points, I think this is spot on. You might have changed my mind!
I hadn’t considered these kinds of concrete cases of using binary to memorize something. Very interesting!
However, I have been looking at ‘binary’ as a modifier for extra information in other systems by pre-pending a digit that represents the binary string. (Thanks to @Protojimbo for making me aware of the concept)
For example, 078 could mean that the items represented by ‘7’ and ‘8’ each have two possible states. 0 78 means they are both in the default state (binary 00) while 1 78 would mean the ‘7’ is ‘off’ but the ‘8’ is in the seconds state (binary 01), and 3 78 would mean both items are in the second state (binary 11). I think this can be useful, for example, to extend an alphabet-character system into a case-sensitive alphabet-character system.
That’s very interesting. I was thinking a bit about how binary systems would work after I wrote my message. It sounds like the most common system is 6 digits or 8 digits per image. Is there a reason not to do 10 digits? 1024 images is pretty close to the number of images that most people are using for a 3-digit system. Is it just because speed is better when reading 6 or 8 digits?
It works very well! Until you meet a non-binary person…
I do 10 digit binary actually. I think most people do 6 or digits. I mislead you a bit there with the example of 24. You don’t need the set of items to be a multiple of your digits. If your set of items isn’t a multiple you can just add random additional 0s at the end representing random filler products you wouldn’t buy anyway so that you get enough digits for a fully translatable series of digits according to your system - (or improvise something with a smaller system if possible). With 10 digits I usually have the problem that the length of the sequence is to big to translate it fast and accurately into the right image. At least with my vision, don’t know if that is just a problem for me. But since a lot of 9 digit-system users were memorizing 3x3 matrizes it might be the case, because that also provides a stronger focus. The advantage of my 10 digit system was though, that I was able to place one entire line on one location, which meant that when I had gaps and remembered something there was a decent chance it would trigger the whole line and I wouldn’t lose points due to that. But I way too often mismemorized single digits wrongly and I never felt like I could speed up really. I haven’t trained this discipline lately though because I’ve been specializing on ML. But if I should ever resume training Binaries competitively I wouldn’t want to give up on 10 digits yet…maybe it just needs more time. I just like the idea of having a whole line of 30 Binaries on one location too much that I would want to give up on 10digits this easily.
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Personally I do like the current ML format, but I don’t think it would hurt at all to add side events or other fun options. Even making the “random” events from ML slams available as fun side events would be a plus.
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