I am still putting together a major method list for 00-99. I had a plan to then convert those images to a PAO list, but I’m not sure what the advantage is here.
I see the utility in PAO if I was in a memory competition or needed to remember a long string of numbers very rapidly, but my memory goals are a little less ambitious. I’m planning on going to nursing school in the spring and considered having these skills in my back pocket would help a lot.
Is PAO somehow regarded as “better” in some way? Because if that is the case maybe I should just go ahead and make a PAO list anyway.
Do you NEED to? Probably not, but only you can determine that.
I think it wouldn’t be too much of an additional chore to create a PO list (people, objects.) It should be easy to come up with or find entries for all of those. Also, if you haven’t yet, do this for the single digits too 0-9. There are a bunch of lists shared on the forum and sites like memcoder.com can help fill gaps if you’re stuck.
This will give you some additional flexibility when trying to link or visualize information. Not everything you’ll need to study will only have a simple two-digit number attached. By having the options to make a slightly expanded scene you can create more memorable images and handle longer sequences.
For a minimal up-front investment in terms of an additional week or so of work to add those additional entries, it will pay dividends in useability.
Since you’re not trying to go for speed competition, you don’t need to constantly drill this list to the point of instant fluency, so as long as you can get comfortably familiar to a point where you can recognize that the specific images in your list represent numbers, and you can encode and decode at a reasonable pace to make it worth it, then you’ll be set. This can be maintained with probably no more than a half-hour of review per week. (220 total elements, about 10 seconds of review each, would take just over 36 minutes.)
I think for your purposes you can definitely leave pre-defined actions out of the mix and just go with whatever feels best when creating mnemonic scenes. Its nice to have that organic flexibility and I think you’ll find that you can come up with really good people+object active connections on your own better than having to force an arbitrary action into a scene.
Ultimately, you’ll know best what is a good fit for you. You may not “need” the “extra” elements regularly, but it may be worth having in your pocket for those instances where you do. If it were me, I’d rather spend a little time now and maybe end up not using it as often versus getting into a situation where you really wish you had it and have to cram to try to acquire it in the middle of studying or doing a project. As I said, its not a very big extra lift to add the second type.
In the grand scheme of things, 330 total pre-defined associations isn’t that many. It can seem like it at first, but you’ll be surprised how it clicks, especially if you can just “read” them all with major sounds.
The 100 actions are the toughest. It’s hard to make them all distinct and unique, even harder if you try to fit them to major sounds. It can be done though! You can always start with Person and Object, see how it goes with those, and then if needed introduce actions later on.
I think a two digit Major system would be completely fine.
The PAO system has some advantages:
numbers with more than two digits need less locations when you store them in a memory palace
less repetition of the images, simply because there are more of them compared to a Major system
As you already mentioned, PAO would rather make sense in memory sports or when you have to memorize a lot of digit strings. In everyday use, the above advantages are rather neglectable. But there are other things to consider, for instance:
What about numbers with four digits? I think it could feel a bit off when the object is missing. For example let’s say P is King Charles and A is lifting. So King Charles is lifting. But what is he lifting?
A PAO system needs more effort to learn and maintain than a Major system as there are three times more images. Don’t underestimate this! Without proper repetition you will forget the images after a while.
A Major system already gives you a huuuge advantage compared to someone who doesn’t use mnemonics. Especially when you can use it fluently.
In my eyes using a two digit PAO outside of memory sports would be a bit like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. But that’s just my opinion.
Nursing school doesn’t seem like it will require much memorization of numbers (though medical school might, what with medication dosages and such…). That said, a PAO does have the advantage of immediately knowing what part of a given image is the number as opposed to a major image where you’d have to decode everything first. You also don’t have to search for a fitting image every time you need to encode something.
Funny thing is, major images can use a lot less space, especially if your language tends to compound nouns like German does. So for example ‘Sporttasche’ (sports bag) would be 09416, ie you have one object with the informational content of one PAO image. Since nouns can be arbitrarily long, you could use something like ‘Sporttaschenverkaufsstandsbesitzer’ (person who owns a stand that sells sports bags) and encode 0941628478012190104 just by visualizing said person selling their wares, then tack on whatever other information you want on top of that. So once again, if you value palace space over time, you can go for major images. If you value time over space, go for a PAO.
I personally only use PAO but that’s owed more to my being a law student, as I like to use it to memorize lectures, precedent and the solutions of cases, for which I need to quickly encode and recall the article numbers. That said, there’s nothing stopping you from switching to major if you try out the PAO now. One evening spent sitting down to write out all its elements is all it takes, and you’ll have a much better basis for your decision once you’ve tried both.
It seems like there are legitimate pluses and minuses to all sides here.
I think I will continue on with the major method and explore PAO a little bit later.
Thanks for all your advice.
FWIW (I’m very much a newbie myself) PAO Major system is great.
Having the PAO use a major system, makes it self-referencing.
I’ll never be doing competition (so I don’t need it to be super quick) - more of a personal journey for general memory improvement - but I really like having the backbone of the Major system to encode the PAO.
No, you don’t need a PAO system. (I’d even suggest that you don’t even need them for competition, although they would provide certain benefits for some events.)
I don’t use PAO as an enthusiast who is memorizing a lot of general-interest things for my own enrichment. However, I have come up with a list of people available to represent 00-99 (based on Major). There are situations where it helps to interject a person/character into a scene. With pi, for example, I’m memorizing it in 6-digit clusters of 3 2-digit combos. So the sequence of 105820 starts with Taylor Swift (Major, 10), who is holding a loaf (58) of bread with a large nose (20) growing out one end. Each scene has a character doing something in relation to the other numbers.
I keep a list of multiple people for every 2-digit combination from 00-99, so I can fit the appropriate person to the scene and am not constantly reusing the same people when a lot of the same patterns come up in pi. (But I think I’m holding at just 300 digits for pi, so that hasn’t been a huge issue.) So even though I might typically use a a friend, Steven James, for 06, I decided to use Steve Jobs for the sequence 067982, since that better fit the scene: Steve Jobs, wearing a cape, pulls out an iPhone.
All of that to say: You may benefit from having some alternate associations for the nouns in your Major system, but that doesn’t mean it has to look like a typical PAO approach.
I’d definitely recommend looking into Alex Mullen’s memory stuff. Browse around his website and some of his older YouTube videos. He used his memory techniques to help him through med school. Some number stuff but most of it is associations and such. Would help you alot I think. I’ve been a firefighter/EMT-A for over 13 years and still managed to pick up a bunch of stuff I was struggling with.
My thoughts don’t fall far from most others’ here.
I have multiple number systems. I like the versatility.
I regularly use a modified 00-99 major system that, for many numbers, there is a “set” of mnemonics to choose from—each mnemonic in a set is quite different from the others but they mean the same thing—they are mnemonic synonyms of each other, if you will.
At the end of the day, the only way to get a “holistic” system is through experimentation—finding solutions specific to your recollection abilities and the materials you want to recall.
On that note, I’ll point to a little “Temple of Apollo” advice echoed by a number of “ancient” mnemonists:
“Know thyself.”
In terms of “gaining knowledge”, I’d say it sounds pretty apt.
If you only have a single use for using the system, then the simplest solution that works for you is the best.
But if you expand out, there are other uses for PAO. For example, PAO is awesome for memorizing dates. Especially birth dates where you don’t need to encode the century. My extended family has over a hundred people and I know each of their birthdays and anniversaries. Because with PAO there is one image for the whole date instead of three.
Even when I need a century, it’s easy enough to add a second object to get that part.
Not sure if I understood well the original question, but my experience is sort of backwards with PAO.
I used the major system (or rather my own version of it) for numbers 0-99 for a long while. I was simply coming up with words on the fly when I needed it. After a while I was repeating the ones that worked the best for me.
Then I realised that, if I made the list of the words I was using regularly, I already had an almost complete PAO list. So it was a natural next step. And it was ready quickly, without spending a long time drilling/learning it