Remember numbers with the Major system
December 25th, 2015 at 10:39 am (Education, Flying)
Another great tidbit that I gained from reading Joshua Foer’s book, Moonwalking with Einstein, is the Major system for memorizing numbers.
Briefly, the Major system is a series of rules for converting numbers into words (usually concrete nouns) which you can then lodge in your memory (or even better, memory palace). For example, if I wanted to remember that the 17 items required for VFR (visual flight rules) flight in an airplane are in paragraph 91.205 of the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations), I would create two words using the consonants B,D and N,S,L, like “bed” and “nasal”. Then I combine them in some graphic way, like imagining sticking a bed up my nose before getting in the plane.
Effectively, the Major system gives you the ability to memorize arbitrary numbers, for the cost of memorizing a mapping of 10 digits (0-9) to consonant sounds. If you need to remember longer numbers, you end up with a chain of images, which you can place into a sequence of memory palace locations to remember them in order. (I already tried out the memory palace method just to remember what those 17 VFR items actually are, and it seems to be working!) I’m looking forward to exercising it some more.
Leigh Torgerson said,
December 26, 2015 at 9:38 am
from the Wikipedia article on the method of loci, I found this video, and it makes me want to learn more languages!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNmf-G81Irs
I’m going to have to try out these memory systems!