Do you use "reverse lookup"? #MPRL

[bjoern.gumboldt (Бьёрн Гумбольдт / ब्योर्न गम्बोल्ट / 龚博 / 龔博宇)]

@Simon

With the reverse lookup, you start with the image, and then think about which location it was in. The location itself gives you the information you are trying to recall, based on a rule you have defined in advance.

Let’s say the three of us go to a game show about the US presidents and these are the different setups we’ll use:

1. @RMBittner: Single journey with 45 locations (chronological order) with one president per location. Some additional information such as party affiliation, age when inaugurated, etc. also encoded in each location.

2. @Simon: 2 journeys with one president per location. Some additional information per location, except for party affiliation which is given by the memory palace in which you find the president.

3. @bjoern.gumboldt: 4 journeys for less than one, one, two, and more than two terms in office. Some additional information in each location.

How many presidents did not complete their first term? Even if you have assassinations, illnesses, etc. stored as additional details, you’d still need to go through your entire list. I could even tell you which ones by just going to that palace in my setup.

Who was the next democratic president after Woodrow Wilson? Even though you’d be able to just check the next and the next until you get to FDR, for @Simon it will simply be the next one in his democratic palace.

Who was president before Chester A. Arthur? For you it’s just one location back on your journey. @Simon and I would need to double check the president’s ordinal number and then see if we’re lucky and he’s in the previous location or if we need to check other palaces.

@bjoern.gumboldt

Using familiar concepts, we are able to use a reverse lookup by finding the palace […] in a set of palaces […], instead of storing at ton of repetitive values […]. By using a set of palaces we are able to cluster the information.

I prefer the “terms in office”-approach because it involves the most math otherwise. I just find Eisenhover in my 2-terms-palace; whereas, you’d have to retrieve his inauguration date and that of the next president and compute the difference. We commonly call him the 34th president and not 34a and 34b, so that information is the one that is usually the least known.

Fact of the matter is, the one attribute you pick for your palaces comes for free. You will always have 45 locations, but by breaking down the ONE big palace you can tremendously improve upon recall time for that particular attribute. The jumping across palaces to find the chronologically next or previous that @Simon and I need to do is well worth the tradeoff.

@RMBittner

I think perhaps I’m not understanding your use of the phrase reverse lookup. I’m used to hearing this phrase in the context of phone numbers: Instead of finding a phone number by starting with the name you want to reach, you use the phone number to find the person. So: two pieces of information, each of which allows you to get to the other. […] And maybe I’m reading something into “reverse lookup” that you didn’t intend.

@bjoern.gumboldt

For the younger generation

back in the days we’d see people’s phone numbers on our display and then needed to figure out who’s number it was. Basically, instead of thinking of the person you want to call and then dial their number, you’d do things in reverse; hence, reverse lookup . These days looking up which country an IP address is from would be considered reverse lookup.

Not all all, that is exactly what I mean, but it’s not just “two pieces of information, each of which allows you to get to the other.” like you say. You can always go through your chronological palace and simply call out the presidents that are Republican and skip over the ones that are not. Difference is that you’d have to do this every time, what @Simon describes takes care of this during initial setup.

Maybe that’s the problem with the term though. In the post I refer to it as Memory Palace Reverse Lookup instead of just reverse lookup like I do in the title. You’re right, a reverse lookup could always be done, so maybe I should have even called it Memory Palace Reverse Lookup SETUP, because how you cluster your set of memory palaces determines their efficiency later on.

Ultimately, it’s up to you which piece of information you’d like to give this special treatment. Marianne Williamson’s 12 palace setup for the presidents might well be Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. I’m sure this reference will be dated before soon, but you now what I mean.