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The Memory Masters
Vaystrem writes "Wired's Article 'The Masters of Memory' details the outcome of the recent U.S. Memory Championship ,where 'three dozen people who had, in just five minutes, memorized the positions of 52 cards in a shuffled deck and were now happily organizing cards in a new deck into the same order as the pack they had memorized.'" The article includes details of "the mind numbing upcoming world championship. Could you in a half hour 'memorize a random string of thousands of 1s and 0s'?" I'm still working on the mnemonic alphabet.
Open source program for training mnemotechnic memory:
Mnemesis
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
> do you actually need to memorize random strings of numbers
PIN codes, phone numbers, ID numbers, passwords, registration numbers.
They are hardly ever as long as 150 digits but they are EXTREMELY common.
> Instead, our brains are much better suited to recognizing patterns
RTFA, that's what the whole concept is based on. Just associate symbols with patterns/images and then create a story/image based on the set created.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin."
-John Von Neumann
Any decimal number has approximately 3/10 the number of characters of it's binary equivalent. There is no exponential change in the shear number of characters to process.
[e.g. 2^10=1024, 2^20=1M etc]
Thus If I encode my data from binary to HEX, I get better "compression" of information.
Note: IIRC, according to Algorithmic Information Theory, if I were trying to encode "all the data of the universe", then the fact that my compression scheme only reduces the amount of information by a constant and the computation for conversion would probably be so incredibly expensive, there exists no computational gain from Mnemonics.
However, if I'm given a piece of paper and allowed to use a clever encoding scheme than might be able to "memorize" anything. I only need to memorize a smaller number and the program, which encodes it. Thus deriving my result. Remember, by the rules of this competition I have more time than memory here. Frankly, I think an encoding competition would be more interesting.
I'm curious as to how this philosophy relates to AIT, Wolfram's Principle of Computational Equivalence, and foundational mathematics.
"There are two kinds of science -- physics and stamp collecting"
-Ernest Rutherford
(Or has he quoted similarly, if I wanted to memorize science, I would have studied botany)
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
The story you are referring to is the true account of one the most famous subjects in psychology--"S" studied by the Russian neurologist AR Luria. He authored a book called "The Mind of A Mnemonist: A Litte Book About a Vast Memory." The man could not forget anything and was tortured his whole life by it. Highly recommended reading.
As someone who has done Casino Security(long,long ago) I can say most casinos don't want card counter.
1 card counter is a draw, 100 card counters is a loss. which is what you get when it becomes known you don;t mind counters. Counter often work in teams.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, it's no big deal to memorize a deck of cards in order.
:-)
I used to teach a course on memory. I guaranteed that the participants would have a nearly perfect memory in four hours. The secret? Everyone already has a nearly perfect memory, and it just takes some organization to make it work more efficiently. If you read the book, "How to Develop a Super Power Memory" by Harry Lorayne, you will get most of these skills. If you follow the directions while you read the book you will only have to read it once.
The first memory course I came across that taught these skills was by Bruno Furst, but I've found out that these techniques have been in existence since ancient Greek and Roman times and the "mnemonic alphabet" and "pegs" have been available for the English language since the early 1700's. Every generation or so someone makes a good living teaching these same skills to others and performing on stage.
I would be interested in a website that collects mnemonic formulas. For instance, it has been mentioned that medical students have a large number of mnemonic formulas for remembering their subjects. Does anyone know of anyplace where they are published?
Some people seemed to have learned to memorize out of self-defense. John Stuart Mill and John Locke both had great memories, but Mill apparently had a brutal father to thank for his achievements, while other educated men of the time built "Castles" or "Mansions" using the loci method of mnemonics supposedly popularized by Seneca. Want to memomorize the Bible? Jerry Lucas, a former basketball player who wrote, "The Memory Book" with Harry Loryane, had a course for memorizing the New Testament. There are others out there.
While memory intelligence, it has a great deal to do with education.
And Roger Dawson wrote a book called, "Confident Decision Making" which included a little quiz about the data people use to make decisions. An example is: In miles, how long is the Mississippi River? Your answer must meet two criteria to be correct: It may be a range (say, 1500 miles to 2000 miles) that falls within 90% of the correct answer. An answer like 2150 to 2500 would fit. So would 2000 to 2250 since it includes a value within 90% of the right answer. (Using the Missouri River as the main branch.) Everyone who I asked these questions failed in over 50% of the questions, yet each one thought they were good decision makers, based on facts that they "knew". Just based on this, I think that some attention to mnemonics may be important.
Mike
Sorry dude, but 1024 bits is 256 hex digits. Each hex digit represents one nibble, or one half-byte which is 4-bits. And, 1024 >> 2 is clearly 256.
Now, I notice you are listing them in groups of 4, which makes 64 groups of four. But, those groups aren't hexadecimal characters, they are hexadecimal words of 2-bytes in length.
Justin Dubs