[This thread was copied here from the old forum.]
NeilG 12 September, 2012 - 23:27
I’m starting to memorise country data; for example
- Location
- Capital City
- Population
- Area
- Flag
Most of which is fine. Location I’m just getting through practice (flash card software) without difficulty. For others, one example is I imagine a Crow (for Croatia) running in Zig Zags (for the capital Zagreb).
The population and area I encode like this:
Population is 4,290,612 (2011) and Area 56,594 square kilometres.
These approximate to 43 followed by five zeros … therefore 435, and 57 followed by three zeros … therefore 573. So the population and area encode to 435573, a six figure number easy to encode using the PAO system I’m finalising and associate the ensuing image with the Crow.
I’m having trouble with the flags. I initially had the Crow wearing a Niqab, which encodes Red - White - Blue for me (the colours in this case in horizonal strips top to bottom) … but just having the colour information is not enough. Maybe enough to trigger my memory of the flag if I’m thinking of the country, but NOT enough to trigger my memory of the country if I’m seeing the flag. The large part of the problem is the huge amount of similar flags with the same colours but slightly different arrangement, or with decoration on the flag.
Anyone here have a system they’ve used successfully with flags?
(Incidentally … where Niqab came from: I use the resistor codes for colours 0=Black, 1=Brown, 2=Red etc., and a version of the Major system 0=S/Z, 1=L, 2=N to remember short colour sequences)
Zaphod 13 September, 2012 - 00:01
Hi Neil,
I am an encoder by trade, so let me give you my feeling on this…
NeilG wrote:
I’m starting to memorise country data; for example
- Location
- Capital City
- Population
- Area
- Flag
Most of which is fine. Location I’m just getting through practice (flash card software) without difficulty. For others, one example is I imagine a Crow (for Croatia) running in Zig Zags (for the capital Zagreb).
NeilG 13 September, 2012 - 03:14
Zaphod wrote:
May I suggest that you also learn the neighbouring countries ? This will help you create links between countries and keep the location engraved in your memory for a much longer time (remember that rote memory that is not anchored to locations is volatile). Then, knowing the neighbour countries (or seas) and their number is a nice information to remember.
Good suggestion - not sure how I’ll tackle it but once I have images (like the crow) for each country, it shouldn’t be too hard.
Quote:
May I suggest that you remember populations in powers of 1000 ? You will need to use the number later on. Adding 5 zeros to 43 is something bizarre. Populations are generally counted in millions, so if you take this for granted, you won’t need to remember the number of zeros that are behind 43, but rather, remember 4.3 (million) inhabitants. As for Area, a typical density (to be able to compare countries) for European countries is 100 inhabitants/sq km. So it makes sense to remember country areas in thousands of square km (here 56). By comparing 4.3 to 56, you will see that the population density of Croatia is slightly lower than some other European countries.
I like this - certainly for population, where keeping to three digits for millions (from 307 million for the USA down to point-something for smallest countries) works very nicely. Only two countries are into four figures - and I don’t think that I’m likely to confuse 1.3 and 1.1 as the populations for China and India as millions instead of the billions they are).
Quote:To encode floating decimal numbers with the PAO system, you just need to add yet another PAO combination for the “.”
Great suggestion. Is there a risk of becoming confused/conflicted by the “.” being used so much though?
Quote:
When you think of encoding something, you should try to find a general rule (which will help you encode many idems) and then only code exceptions or peculiarities.
Would you concur with me to say that the majority of flags are either of a uniform with a distinctive sign, or with horizontal stripes, or vertical stripes, or a cross. Then, there are strange flags like the UK flag or the US flag, but either you already know them, or you can make an exception and find images to describe these peculiar flags (think of heraldics).
Back to Croatia; you could imagine your crow zig-zagging on the horizon (meaning that the stripes are horizontal). Had it been a flag with vertical stripes, you could have imagined it zig-zagging inside a big cage, with vertical bars, meaning that the flag stripes are horizontal…
Zaphod 13 September, 2012 - 03:25
NeilG wrote:
Quote:
To encode floating decimal numbers with the PAO system, you just need to add yet another PAO combination for the “.”
Great suggestion. Is there a risk of becoming confused/conflicted by the “.” being used so much though?
Choosing to not remember real valued numbers cuts off all continuous domains from being remembered through mnemonics.
In order to get everything in, it could be important to also plan to code exponents of 10, so that you can easily remember the number of atoms in the universe, but also such numbers as the Avogadro number, a.s.o. Typically, you just need to add an “E” (elephant ? 
in the number. Whatever comes after the elephant is elephantesque, i.e. powers of 10…
Quote:
the major confusion is all the similar tricolour verticals and horizontals - that’s where I need the system.
Thinking of your image over the horizon or jailed behind vertical bars should do the trick (I think).
P
NeilG 21 September, 2012 - 09:13
In order to avoid the potential for conflicts between encoding of an overused “.” element in my PAO, I decided to add ten new PAO elements … “.0”, “.1”, “.2” … “.9”. I’ll see how it goes with these.
jamjams 29 November, 2012 - 14:39
Here is a technique that I’ve been very successful with. Combine two images:
Image #1 is:
- The first image that comes to mind when you think of the country. Canada makes me think of a lumberjack.
- OR an image that comes to mind from the syllables you need to remember to remember the country name. I have never heard of Eritrea before, so I think of a tree in the air.
Image #2 is:
- If the flag is striped/rectangled/triangled, use the stripes to imagine a landscape. For example left-to-right blue-yellow-red (Romania) is a beach and a field of roses. Green-white-green (Nigeria) is a white house on a green lawn. Top-to-bottom red-green is a red sunset over a field. These are obvious examples, but some will be more creative. The best possible scenario is if you can match this image to an actual place.
- If there is a unique image (leaf, dragon, trident) turn this into an object/action.
- Frequently there are stars. Simply to recognize the flag, you rarely need to know how many. Imagine them as starfish, boats, people, or actual stars.
I think that as intellectuals/techies, we like to resort to numbers very quickly as a way to store data (i.e. a series of colors). But the brain far prefers images. I have never had a problem mixing up the colors or sequence when using a landscape image.
Hey it’s Botswana! It’s a bird’s eye view of a Botswanan bridge, the water getting a big foamy near the edges. I think I also see some robots (bots) crossing the bridge! Now wasn’t that easier than remembering 6 9 0 9 6?
NeilG 30 November, 2012 - 02:56
Thanks for that; I’ve actually ‘naturally’ ended up using images for many of the flags
For example - Ukraine is a Crane (bird) for me. The flag is horizontal two stripes, blue above and yellow below. I picture a scene with yellow reeds at a riverside with a blue sky above, and picture the Crane sat in that scene.
Bulgaria is a womble (one of the wombles was “Uncle Bulgaria”, and the wombles lived underground at Wimbledon Common). So, the flag - three stripes horizontally, White, Green, Red - becomes a white hazy sky over a green grassy common over red clay/earth which the wombles have dug their home into.
I’ve not created images like this for every flag, but some definitely lend themselves to it more.
My bugbear mostly seems to be flags that are very similar (for example, Netherlands and Luxembourg)
Soporose 22 January, 2014 - 23:16
This would be an interesting addition to your countries database:
Lots of tricky meaningless words in there though.