In a recent post of mine (System for short number memory tasks) I decribed a 2 digit method in which the first digit is translated as a consonant and the second as a vowel-ish sound. The logic behind this practice is that you end up with very short “words” that can be read really fast.
example:
36 49 01 10 55 = ma ky pi lo soe
I think this practice has a lot of potential to be the basis of very fast number memorisation, which makes me wonder why no one is responding to my post.
So, I would like to know if anyone uses this already or knows about others using it. Or maybe you see problems, that I am not aware of.
My system uses consonant-vowel for 2-digit numbers. It’s based on the ideas in this blog post. Every image for numbers (1-, 2-, and 3-digit) has a one-syllable pronunciation.
For 1-digit numbers I use vowels:
Number
Notation
Example
0
O
as in bOAt
1
I
as in bEEt
2
U
as in tWO
3
AA
as in cAt
4
A
as in fAther
5
AI
as in fIve
6
IH
as in sIx
7
E
as in sEven
8
EI
as in EIght
9
UH
as in bUs
For 2-digit number I use consonant-vowel:
Here are the consonants:
Number
Notation
Example
0
S/Z
1
T
(not d)
2
N
3
M
4
R
(TH at the end of some words)
5
L
6
B
7
K
(not g)
8
F/V
9
P
(not b)
Example 2-digit images:
Number
Notation
Image
00
SO
sewing needle
03
SAA
satellite
13
TAA
tap dancer
30
MO
Moby Dick
86
FIH
fiddlehead fern
99
PUH
pufferfish
For 3-digits, consonant-vowel-consonant:
Number
Notation
Image
009
SOP
soap
117
TIK
tiki
200
NOS
Nostradamus
400
ROS
roses
I really like it the way it works and would recommend it. It even makes numbers rhyme. 03 rhymes with 13. 200 rhymes with 400. Etc.
10-digit US phone numbers become four syllables, which is under the 7 +/- 2 items that can be held in memory, so you don’t even need to convert them to images to hold them in memory.
Example phone number: 123-456-7890 (TUM-RAIB-KEI-PO).
Blockquote10-digit US phone numbers become four syllables, which is under the 7 +/- 2 items that can be held in memory, so you don’t even need to convert them to images to hold them in memory. Example phone number: 123-456-7890 (TUM-RAIB-KEI-PO).
Your phone number example gives me the suggestion that your system allows for a technique that can be summed up as "pretending the sentence your articulating has meaning other than the images you have associated to the 3 and 2 digit numbers; TUM-RAIB-KEI-PO sounds like Tomb raider kei po, a special kind of martial arts designed for this movie. Is this something you take advantage of?
The 3-digit images are mostly based on the sounds. So 123 = TUM = tomb.
Many of the 2-digit numbers are left over from an older major system, so my consonant-vowel words are like words in a new language that only my brain speaks. KEI means spider (from aKaVish / עכביש) and PO means an oPoSSum. I just changed the pronunciations of those words to my system’s “language”.
So TUM-RAIB-KEI-PO is literally saying the words tomb-ribosome-spider-opossum in a kind of constructed language.
I tried to train myself to read numbers in the new language and not convert them to English (or whatever languages the words came from). Example: a number like 005 (SOL → soldier) is only pronounced “SOL”, never “soldier”. So I wouldn’t try to read TOM-RAIB as Tomb Raider but would try to strengthen the meanings of the artificial words.
The system was based on the idea that I mentioned in that blog post:
“Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is ‘si’ and 7 ‘qi’) Their English equivalents—”four,” “seven”—are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length. In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers. In this domain, the prize for efficacy goes to the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, whose brevity grants residents of Hong Kong a rocketing memory span of about 10 digits.”
I didn’t double-check the original studies, but I liked the one-syllable per image idea and went with it.
It’s basically the Ben System but expanded to 1- and 2-digit numbers and with different sound assignments to the digits.
@Josh, your artificial language approach is excellent. I had contemplated a very similar idea for a long time.
Something that I toyed with, but didn’t have the commitment to pursue, was a language of short syllables–partly inspired by Chinese. The basic idea was that when you read an English sentence, you can simultaneously interpret it as a different sentence in this constructed language. And, the syllable vocabulary would have been devised for its mnemonic qualities–a heavy concentration of concrete nouns, action verbs, and so on.
Are you able to tell us more about your results with this system? I would be interested to hear anything you can tell us about it. How efficient do you find it? Are you finding many day to day uses for it? What are the challenges? etc.
That sounds like an interesting idea that could lead to new kinds of techniques.
I can’t tell you how efficient it is for memory sports because I haven’t trained in a long time, but I use it for remembering numbers in daily life and started turning it into a large peg list for memorizing some other things I was learning. I don’t think it’s any less efficient than the Major System or Dominic System — it’s basically just a modified and extended Ben System.
I think it’s easier to learn than the Major System because people don’t have to understand the difference between sounds and letters or figure out why “w”, “h”, and “y” are ignored. I hope that some people eventually try it and put it to the test in competition, because I really like the way it works.
Maybe I’ll make a pre-made set of images with it and post it so that some beginners can give it a try and see if they like it.
I think that is a great idea. It sounds like a system that could deliver amazing results. If somebody started with that from the outset, and was dedicated to it for awhile, I bet it would perform extremely well.
