Any suggestions for the best way to commit these two-digit codes of the 50 States of the United States of America to long-term memory?
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Most of them are obvious, as it’s either the first two letters of the word (Alabama: AL; Oregon: OR), or the first letter of each word (North Carolina: NC; Rhode Island: RI).
So, I would start by making a list of states that don’t follow that basic rule, e.g. Alaska, Kentucky. These seem to one states where the “first two letters” rule would be ambiguous (e.g., TExas and TEnnessee). The 2-letter code tends to be either the first two consonants, or the first and last letters. Separate the list in to these two cases, plus others that don’t conform (e.g. Alaska).
Congratulations, you’ve basically learned them all already. To consolidate them, put them in a flashcard system, and review them for 5 minutes once per week. For convenience, you could get away with just the ones from the second paragraph.
Remember, these codes were designed to be memorable. if they gave Alabama the code QD or TX then it would be unnecessarily confusing.
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Gulman’s skit, which I’ve seen a few times, is the funniest thing around.