Acquaintance with Mnemonics

Introduction

Good day! I must say right away that the purpose of this article is to introduce and, possibly, interest you in such a thing as mnemonics. Mnemonics is the science of memorization. That is, a set of methods and tricks that will help you remember large amounts of information in the correct sequence (For example, 100 random words (numbers) can be stored sequentially with an average interval of 6 seconds). Some manage to remember several thousand digits after the number Pi. Mnemonics also helps in mastering a foreign language). But it’s too early for us to think about it. You ask: “Why do I need your mnemonics?” I’ll answer: you can use it not only as a hobby (from simply making life easier, to the point that you can surprise your friends by suggesting to remember N information one by one with them), but also participate in competitions (yes, there are memorization competitions, where not natural geniuses are involved, but people who have trained their memory).

Let's try to remember something

Mnemonics is based on a method such as linking information with images. To begin, consider a fairly simple example of remembering: let's say you need to remember a password for mail.
In mnemonics, there are a lot of ready-made and generally accepted 'standards', which you can use to remember the information you need. Here is the ready-to-remember pattern of numbers: 1-GJ, 2-dt, 3-kh, 4-chch, 5-pb, 6-shl, 7-sz, 8-vf, 9-rts, 0nm .

The code is simple. The main digit corresponds to the consonant letter with which the name of the digit begins: Four - H, Five - P, Six - W, Seven - C, Eight - B. The second consonants are consonant with the first: PW, SZ, VF. But these principles are not always followed in this code. Why? Yes, because in Russian there are only 20 consonants, and all of them are used. Therefore, a few exceptions to the rule you just need to memorize: 1-gzh, 3-kh, 9-rts.
When I tried to deal with mnemonics, in the literature they gave me such an action plan:
1. For example, you chose Rambler mail. To remember that this password is from this mail, we will create an image of the Rambler-RAM (window).

2. Remember any poem that you know very well: “Faces are erased, colors are dull, either people or dolls ...”

3. Indicate this poem visually. In this case, you can imagine a doll on the ropes.

4. Associate the poem with Rambler. To do this, in your imagination on the image of the "window frame" you need to hang the image of the "doll". Consider the resulting combination of images for a few seconds.

5. Now train to enter numbers on the numeric keypad of your computer. Speak mentally a passage of the poem and EVERY ACCEPTED letter convert into a digit in accordance with the learned alphanumeric code. In this case, the password will look like this (words are separated by dots): 69. 7292. 3973. 2736. 2. 6. 62. 2. 6. 336. (LC. STRT. KRSC. TSKL. T. L. LD. T. L. CCL). The password from 23 digits turned out. But no one bothers you to enter a password from a larger number of digits.

6. During the day, recall the connection between the window and the doll several times and say the corresponding passage of the poem. This is necessary to consolidate information (communication) in the brain.

If you get the hang of it, you can, as mentioned earlier, with an interval of 6 seconds (it usually takes so long to come up with an image / associate information with a specific template) to memorize a decent number of digits. You can surprise your friends by arguing with them for a bottle of beer that you will remember 20-30 numbers that a friend will call, but a friend will not.

I will give you another, more complex, but rather illustrative example, so that you better imagine what we are talking about.

In competitions in mnemonics, there is such a thing as remembering binary numbers.
The binary combination of numbers is encoded into decimal digits as follows:

000 - 0
001 - 1
010 - 2
011 - 3

100 - 4
101 - 5
110 - 6
111 - 7

So, to quickly remember binary numbers, you need to memorize the correspondence of numbers in binary and octal number systems.

A memorized series of zeros and ones should be divided into groups of 6 digits.

111010001101000100110000010101001111010110100000011110

(111.010) (001.101) (000.100) (110.000) (010.101) (001.111) (010.110) (100.000) (011.110)

The memory speed depends on your encoding speed. The coding speed must be brought to automaticity.

Each triple of digits is replaced by the sign of the octal number system.

(7-2) (1-5) (0-4) (6-0) (2-5) (1-7) (2-6) (4-0) (3-6)

Octal digits are combined in pairs .

(72) (15) (04) (60) (25) (17) (26) (40) (36)

The resulting numbers are encoded into figurative codes of numbers, which are also memorized before automatism.

SiTo - GuBy - Tea - ShiNa - ToPor - GoSi - DuSh - ChayNik - Klei Figurative

codes of numbers are stored on a pre-prepared system of reference images (locks).

Decoding (recall) occurs in the reverse order.

The reference image is the image code of the number (CuTo) - 72 - (7 - 2) - 111 010

When automating the coding process, the mnemonist sees in six digits (111010) one visual image (sieve).

If the storage speed of one image is 6 seconds, then the storage time of one binary digit will be 1 second.

In fact, it should be understood that the mnemonist remembers precisely the visual images, and the speed of memorization in the tables of records for mnemonics is indicated incorrectly.

For instance. If a record of storing binary numbers of 0.66 seconds per one digit (on average) is indicated in the table, then this should be understood as follows: the memorization speed was equal to 4 seconds per average on one image encoding 6 binary digits at once.

Based on this memorization technique, a simple “focus” can be shown. Invite your friends to put coins on the table, tails (1) or eagle (0) up, in random order, 6 rows of 6 coins. In the process of putting coins on the table, remember them (6 coins - this is just one visual image). After remembering, turn away and call “eagle” - “tails” - “tails” - ...

Since the speed of remembering all the coins can be only 18 seconds (3 sec. X 6 rows), and at the same time you remember the coins in the process of laying them out, it is created the impression that you remember a whole bunch of coins at a glance. You can say that you have a photographic memory, and you see all 36 coins on your internal screen. (A description of the focus is from V. Possin's book, How to Develop Super Memory.)

Famous Mnemonists

I will also tell you about one well-known mnemonist - Dominic O'Brien, a six-time world champion in memorization. O'Brien is closed to many casinos. Dominic set a world record: he remembered a deck of 52 cards in 41.43 seconds. Dominic’s scope of his memory is wide: he participates in a television show, demonstrating his abilities on the air, can learn about 400 foreign words in an hour, etc. And most interestingly, as a child, Dominic was a loser. His childhood memory was even slightly weaker than that of his peers. He is not a born genius, he is an ordinary person who trained his memory from an ordinary state.

Conclusion

At first I planned to write a rather detailed educational program, but having imagined how much it would take time and place (somewhere around 15-20 more than this: back up with tables, biographies, etc.), I posed another task: to interest you. I think this will not be a negative side, as you can study this interesting, and most importantly, useful lesson in great detail using the links below. I hope that I aroused your initial interest in mnemonics and you will continue to get to know yourself. There are a lot of pluses, but I did not find any minuses in this lesson. If you speak English at a sufficient level, then after the initial acquaintance, look for information on bourgeois sites. That's all I wanted to tell you. You will find the rest through the links. I hope you get some benefit .Good luck in your endeavors!

Links:
An excellent Russian site about mnemonics. Recommend.
http://www.mnemonica.ru/
http://brainplanet.ru/
A good resource for familiarizing with memory
Memory, speed reading, etc.

UPD: Moved here, as you can save time using mnemonics)
UPD: at the request I will add links about learning foreign words.
Klats
Klats
Klats I also found a great site: memos
. Here are the finished images.

UPD: There were several comments with claims that there was no practical benefit from this, that there was no use in storing certain information in a consistent manner. This upset me. So I could not convey what I wanted. Regarding the "benefits of consistency": you can memorize as you want - even in sequence, even without. The practical benefits are incredible: you learn to correctly memorize large amounts of information. There was also a comment about the fact that this did not last long in my memory. Again not true. It all depends on you: what images you come up with, by what method you will remember. I ask you to take your words back to those who, without having studied this question in more detail, begin to write here about a misunderstanding of the purpose of this lesson: it just plunges me into a stupor. What is the use of a well-tuned memory? There was also a comment about “remembering several thousand numbers after the decimal point Pi, I can forget to take off my pants in the toilet” - for your information, these people keep up very well in old age: they practically don’t suffer from Alzheimer's syndrome, I don’t have schizophrenia etc., unlike most 80-90 year olds. Sorry, just unpleasant to read this kind of unreasonable comments.