Yeah nice I’m also trying combinatorics to remember my encyclopaedia technique
@intranetmouse, I play piano. I remember learning the keyboard. This note on the staff is a C. I use an acronym to help me remember the notes on the staff.Here is the C on the keyboard. I use a location feature that helps me remember where middle C is - it’s the note on the left ot the group of two black keys. The keyboard plays a sound. This is three steps. After a few years, I’m able to not think where the note is and I “just know” where to place my finger so the note is played. After a few more years, I’m able to look at the note and hear the sound. The techniques and mnemonics fade in their usefulness as the rote memorization becomes stronger.
The same thing happens with any learning process. Having the mnemonic to back up your memory is a good thing because sometimes after not playing piano, I have to backtrack and use them. Rote memorization will fade and you want to be able to retrieve the mnemonic tools when that happens.
So seeing the digit, remembering the sounds, flashing through the possible keywords, selecting a keyword such as a default keyword, and flashing through my story of keywords if it doesn’t come to mind quickly is a process I follow when beginning. Eventually with much practice, the digits become words quickly but the process is still there for me as a backup. It’s not so much effectiveness because the system produces accurate results every time but it’s efficiency for reducing the time through the conversions that you want. That comes with practice making it a rote memorization technique.
Doug
Agreed – I’ve found repeating sequences and frequent patterns a bit awkward with the Major system. One possible solution for repeating digits (but not repeated patterns of two or more different digits) would be run-length encoding (RLE) – a very basic compression technique taught in computer science (before learning about superior alternatives like LZ77 and Huffman encoding).
One symbol could be reserved to indicate a repeated sequence. For example, “h” as the first letter of a word, then one digit for the count, then the digit itself. For example:
4777778 = r h57 8 = oar hulk ivy
We could slightly optimise it and say a count of 0, 1 or even 2 is pointless, and subtract 3 from the count, so h57 would encode as h27 (hunk / Hank / honk). Then you could encode up to a 12-digit repeat.
The trade-off would be the added mental complexity of doing this, plus the inability to use any words starting with h for normal encoding (eg house = 0). It would probably only be worth it for memorising numbers with long repeated subsequences.
This is a cool idea. Using one of the neutral sounds to give you the repeat indicator would keep it from interfering. I’ve really never encountered any issue with visualizing repeated digits using Major, at least up to 8 in a row, as they’d create a single scene using a PAAO structure, but this would be really effective if folks are having difficulty or if you are looking at really long strings beyond 8 or 10 in a row.
If you have a 3-digit system built, you can get up to 99 repeats in the form of “Howey - 99x” (Howey PuPPeT would be 99 repeated 1’s)
Very cool.
Yes, for heads and bodies the system seems fine in terms of distinct images, but getting to legs and front-leg/rear-legs I’m not sure. I might end up only getting a 100 or a 1000 usable images, or getting used to distinguishing them.
Cool idea. I’ll give it a try.
Agreed, that’s the design. But permutations can quickly get me to the number of images I want (if it works!).
I dislike going from visual thinking to verbal thinking to decode images (when still getting familiar with the images)
I was inspired by Cistercian numerals and was looking for a way to do something similar, but more visualizable.
Yes, 8888 would just be an unmodified 8 creature.
1111 would be a normal spider,
2222 would be a normal praying mantis, etc.
I like the pokemon approach, but then I’d need to learn them first!
For 100 animals I’d like some system to arrange them into numbers, but haven’t come up with a usable approach yet.
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I see this in the same way as when we learn how to read. When we are small children, looking at a book is like looking at patterns in the carpet, meaningless. Then, we are taught the sounds that each letter make, similar to learning the major system, or something similar. From that point, reading becomes a tedious, arduous task of sounding out each individual letter, then saying it out loud in sequence to get the word.
Then, with practice, suddenly we are skipping the step where we sound out the letters. I haven’t quite gotten there with my Major PAO system, but I imagine that for many of you, when you see 48658812982, you are almost immediately, without effort, picturing two vivid images, leaving you only with the task of connecting them in a memorable way.
This is likely happening faster than you would be able to read off each letter, in the same way that reading a paragraph is significantly faster than you could read each letter. There is also a very small chance that you’d be able to remember each letter in order if you didn’t associate them with their words.
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I’d appreciate the link.
@cedar, it’s in Vol. 2. of Memory Techniques and Toolkit
Doug
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Sorry, I don’t understand how your encyclopedia technique actually works, so I can’t see the combinatoric aspect.
Yeah I haven’t posted the combination aspect yet sorry. I’ll get to it some time