For those interested in making a system like this but may have been discouraged by its variable nature, here are some stats I generated a while back using a Matlab simulation. Hopefully this can mitigate any concerns you might have as to the riskiness of the system.
I’ll preface it by saying that I’m very glad I chose this system. I struggled for a while contemplating different “higher-order” systems. Obviously, different systems work for different people and none is inherently “the best,” but I would re-choose this one if I had to do it over again.
Here goes:
Multi-deck: (say, the hour cards event)
If you were to try for 25 decks 10,000 times (ie. doing 10,000 runs of hour cards with 25 decks each time), here are the stats (for average total number of loci, standard deviation, etc.) you might get.
average total loci needed: 337.6690 (~13.5 loci per deck)
standard deviation: 9.6876*
max (how many loci the longest of the 10000 runs took): 376
min ( " shortest " ): 302
So, the use of 15 loci per deck (1525 = 375) isn’t a bad idea at all. Not one of 10000 runs even made it 377. In fact, playing with the standard deviation, using 15 loci per deck (for a 25-deck run, that is) will work well more than 99% of the time (99.996% of the time to be precise).
Single-deck: (ie. speed cards)
I simulated 1,000,000 decks (ie. you did speed cards 1,000,000 times). Here’s what i got:
max of 3 images on a location: 10.84% (ie. about 11% of the time, you’ll have a maximum of 3 images on any given location)
" 4 ": 31.93%
" 5 ": 28.19%
" 6 ": 15.82% (so, about 86.92% of the time, you won’t have >6 images on any given location*)
" 7 ": 7.50%
" 8 ": 3.29%
" 9 ": 1.38%
" 10 ": 0.56%
*Something you can do also is set a cap at, say, 6 images/locus (ie. move on after 6 images even if the 6th is still black-first). As it says, this only happens once every 7-8 decks, so it’s not all that difficult to just remember by rote that you did that. Then you’ll never have to worry about having an insane amount of images on one locus.
Also, as with multi-deck, the average # of loci needed for speed cards is 13.5. However, many competitors don’t really memorize the last few images, so it really only takes about 11.
As I said, I really like this system and would love to see more people give it a shot. It’s really a great option for anyone serious about memory sports but who’s reluctant about a full 2704 system. Plus, following Lance’s guidelines, you have an easy way to upgrade to 2704 if you feel inclined…
Hope this helps 