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USA National Memory Championships
bigtallmofo writes "Could you memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour? How about remember the exact order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in under an hour as well as one shuffled deck in less than two minutes? If so, you could be counted among 36 grand masters of memory worldwide. Slate is reporting that other spectacular memory feats were performed at the 2005 USA National Memory Championship. Congratulations to Ram Kolli, a graduate student in computer science at Virginia Tech, and this year's champ."
By The Washington Post and The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Senator John McCain (R-AZ) announced Friday afternoon that the Senate would be opening hearings on the USA National Memory Championships after allegations of illegal memory augmentation surfaced. "These allegations of illegal computer implants are very frightening, and we owe it to the American people to investigate this matter fully. Our children are looking up to these men and women as role models, and if they're not actually memorizing things on their own with their God given abilities, we need to put an end to it. There are long term dangers to brain function many of these people are either unaware of or simply ignoring for short-sighted goals."
This year's champion Ram Kolli was among the first to be subpoenaed in the matter, and was expected to testify this week. "I've never illegaly used a computer to assist my memory in my life" said Kolli, noting that he had used computer storage in the past but only in legal ways, such as for class notes and assignments. "I've trained too long and too hard for these championships to throw it all away by using illegal implants. When I memorized pages 73 through 82 of the New York City phonebook, that was all me, and Jorge Benwalt of 212-555-2934 knows it."
Several Google executives have also been called on to testify following claims that they've produced a blackmarket implant that allows people to search Google with their brain. Sources close to Google acknowledged they've done research on such devices, but claim none have been produced or used outside of the lab environment. Google could not be reached for official comment at press time.
Yeah, but can he remember where I left my car keys?
Like Sweepstakes? Try out my service @ http://www.yourpowersweeps.com -- Free 21 day trial, no cc needed.
But I have forgotton what this article is about.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
...try it some time. The next time you're out of the office, try this:
;)
- Imagine you're going to send an email to everyone in your department.
- Imagine, now, that email lists are somehow unavailable.
- Starting with yourself, identify all the people in your row.
- Go one row over, and identify all those people.
Do the same for the rest of the rows.
For those of you who sit in circles in the office, just work your way around from right to left (or left to right).
You'll be surprised at how many people you can remember!
It works with restaurants, too, but since you're not likely to know those people, faces and habits will most likely stick out, rather than names.
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
Is incredible how powerfull can the human brain be. If these people can do that imagine what could Einstein do ?
Think like a hacker, act like a hacker, but never become a hacker !
now is it world wide or USA?
don't forget anything
"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
Congratulations to Ram Kolli
A guy named "Ram" who's a memory champion? come on...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Sure I can! Is there any room left in the MIT Blackjack team shuttle bus?
Ohwait...
...Slashdot editors could do that.
I work in a 4 person department in a 20 person company.
I ran rattle them all off. Now where's my prize?
Though sometimes I have to think about what my own phone number is.....
It's a lot of work, but an ordinary accomplishment using tricks popularized by ex-basketball player Jerry Lucas and magician Harry Lorayne decades ago. Each digit is preassigned a consonant, let's say 1=S, 2=M, 3=R, 4=T, 5=G, then you come up with mnemonics to represent a string of digits, so 214325 might become "Mister Magoo". The trick is to come up with vivid mnemonic images.
In this context such methods are fairly controversial, since the mnemonics are rather time-consuming to learn and recall is slower than brute force (on the order of 5-10 seconds instead of instantaneous), but it has some quite dedicated followers.
What are the odds that out the 24 contestants one hailed from a local high school. Now, what are the odds that the contest had "many local high school students"?
Here's an interesting memory game to try [2 more more people]
Take a deck of cards, shuffled. Remove 1 card randomly and place it face down on the side of the table. All of the players sit in a semi-circle in front of the dealer.
The dealer than plays 1 card face up in the center of the table. ~1 second later, he plays another on top of the card. Repeat 51 times, showing the players 1 card in the deck at a time. When the last card is played, cover the deck up in the middle of the table.
The players (and dealer if he didnt cheat) has seen all cards - save one. The pur-chance-guessing-game ensues: what is that card that is face-down on the side of the table?
I call bullshit. 555 numbers don't actually exist; the prefix is used exclusively for movies, and other situations where it would be bad to use a real phone number.
Forget all of this.
How many of us can remember how many girlfriends we've had sex with?
Oh.--wait--I forgot where I was posting...
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
..but can they be mounted as a mass storage volume on Linux ?
You must be a riot at parties.
Even though you're joking, reading this part got me to thinking of how much our concepts of time and memory at large could be altered if we were able to search through the vast archives of past memories (repressed and active) with the efficiency of Google. Can you imagine being able to remember being slapped by the doctor in a white hospital room, seeing the world for the very first time? Or how about every single dream you ever had - *ever*?
There are so many things we have yet to discover about ourselves, and about the human mind.
My digital rights don't need management.
All you have to remember is that the memory "grand masters" are fakers - end of story.
It's that much easier to remember something like that than just three cards? I guess it's like they actually translate the entire deck into a sort of language. Then they just translate it using the same language every time.
Imagine how much the *AA would panic if every song or movie you heard or saw was a permanent part of your memory that could be recalled in full quality at any time.
...but I forgot to go.
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
I can't even remember what I had for lunch.
Of course that was about 10 beers ago.
Editors that could remember the stories that they put up the day before.
I was entered in that contest, but I forgot to go.
rewriting history since 2109
Dang, forgot all about it.
I believe that because the brain is still developing, infant memories often don't survive in any form. But otherwise, yes, that would amazingly cool. Although if we were going to do computer-brain interfaces, there are of course many many other awesomely neat things you could do.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Imagine a beowulf cluster of them.
Baaaa
My other sig is crap too
but I forgot where the damned competition was.
drats!
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
I wonder how many of these grand masters can be classified as savants... I cant imagine the average joe doing very well.
"...but claim none have been..."
As any real journalist would know, it should be "...none has..."
AT&ROFLMAO
See if you can change your nick to Captain Obvious.
That's the funniest thing I've read all day.
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
WOW!!!
You must be a real Sherlock F'n Holmes if you were able to figure out the story was BS. Your keen intellect and vast sense of humor are impressive.
You MUST have gone to Cal Tech with a comment like that...you 'tard!
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0260541466592520
just wait till they turn 21 and they hit vegas :)
who has Pi memorized to 450 digits. He celebrated pi day (3/14) by memorizing his 500th, and repeating them nonstop all day long. Got a bit on everyone's nerves to say the least.
that was the memory equivalent of an UFIA. i need every brain cell i can get and now some of them are taken up with (not lookingnotlooking) darth vader setting a pack of wild dogs on fire on a pile of flowers in a sssswamp. oh well, random memory ditrus like that is perfect for passphrases, i suppose. don't anyone try to guess my home video's PGP key!
Of course. I'm an excellent driver... four minutes to Wopner...
Am I the only one who glanced at the headline and thought this was a face-off of RAM technologies?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No, that's not how it's done, except for the part about numbers being represented by consonants. If you are in a hurry to explain it and you don't want to take the time to explain it correctly, then just don't try. You mislead people.
Remeber the Slashdot article a few weeks ago about that guy who set the world record for memorizing the most digits of pi? I'll bet he could win this thing easily.
10100111001
oh man, I was supposed to compete this year, but I totally forgot...
I smell ONION
Actually, you smell a subscriber who had too much time on his hands.
3
do i win ?
I once heard an interview with one of these types who did his act as a show. He said the only time he forgot an object somone in the audience asked him to remember, it was an egg. He foolishly placed it next to a white wall in his imaginary home town. When he walked back through town, he didn't see it against the wall.
haha listen to these fools bash the reply when they didn't even read that it was just a joke playing on the joke in the first place.. classic.
I don't see the second joke. I see an idiot who thought the first post was real.
I have spoken to many people who remember nothing from before the age of 5 or 6. On the other hand there are a surprising number of adults who can describe, even name, songs, people, toys, places from the age of three or earlier (under accidentally controlled conditions. For instance, my family moved when I was 4, but I can describe the world that was around me before that, including my brother's birth when I was 2 1/2, and the daycare center I attended when I was 3)
Even earlier memories are still there, in every moment of our life. They just aren't the kinds of memories we recall remembering. They are just a part of us.
p.s. I don't count Salvador Dali, who claims to remember things from the womb, hehe.
In wartime... truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. (Churchill)
That's incorrect. A quick web search reveals: http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20020826.html Only 555-0100 through 555-0199 are exclusively reserved for movies. The remainder of the 555 exchange is being parceled out.
AFAIK, this was not always the case though.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Although I'm sure a fantastic memory would be helpful right now, projects like beagle and dashboard will hopefully let those of us with horrible memory get by just as well.
Oh well, guess we have to waste money on something
I could tell the difference. The card-shuffle movies would be much better.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Well, I know the guy and his nickname is infact RAM. .(with capital letters). He is now a business analyst with CapitalOne.
Ed Cooke, who "would have destroyed the American competition", is a dear friend of mine. He learnt early on that it's polite, when swapping phone numbers, to pretend to write down the number given to you.
Why bother attending the championship?
The private "agency", that Casinos use to scope these potential card counters, probably compile a dossier of these mentats.
Don't bother, just rip the casino off while you can.
0=s or z,
1=t or d
2=n
3=m
4=r
5=l
6=j, sh, ch
7=hard c, k
8=f, ph
9=p or b
Called the Major System, it's been around for hundreds of years (as I recall, haha).
In college I could memorize a deck of cards on clock-ticks. 52 seconds for a deck.
A more impressive trick (to most people) is to have the person shuffle the deck, take out 5 cards and put them in their pocket.
I flip through the remaining 47 card for 30 seconds, and tell them what's in their pocket. (Loraine / Lucas explain how to do this one in the memory book). It's not hard, but takes practice.
After that, I found girls, and quit doing the geek memory thing. You don't want girls to know that you have a good memory - then you lose all your excuses for forgetting to call them, forgetting anniversaries, etc.
Holy cripes! You just gotta love obscure, non-sequitor Vonnegut references!
t ml
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4953/kt_in.h
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
In the real world, fast memorization is important, although, it does not have to be 1000 digits.
For instance, imagine, someone verbally transmits a number to you (a 10 digit number, even 6 digit one). You should be able to remember it and transport it to its destination, maybe to check against a number somewhere else.
Similarly, remembering names of people you meet can be very important when dealing with people.
I have seen these requirements explicity stated in the minimum requirements by many companies.
This might seem silly, and you might say 'That is minimum intelligence for anyone who breathes.' or something to that effect.
But, there are many people, who are knowledgeable (both in breadth and in depth of their respective fields), pretty good at programming or related activities in other fields, but have great trouble, remembering even a small bit of information (they have to keep looking back for each digit) or an inability to remember names.
or I woulda been moderated 'redundant' for posting Yet Another Joke about forgetting how to get to the competition.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I was wondering about the lowest number of bits in which you can stick the full order of a 52 card deck into. So far I can do it in 253 bits of information. Thats about 64 hexadecimal digit number or 78 decimal digits. So you need only some 780 decimal digits to remember order of 10 decks of cards. Of course, if they are all shuffled together, its much more.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Of course this isn't nearly as powerful as the methods of these champions, but it's a good trick for those of us who don't have days to practice assocating numbers with biplanes.
555-1212 is also the number for directory information (the same as 411, only you can dial an area code first).
probably the best street performer I ever saw pulled 10 or 15 people out of the audience, asking each one for their home zip code. Then he took each of them in turn, told them exactly where they live, and even mentioned restaurants and bars that they probably frequent. I was living in Manchester, England at the time (and we were in Nevada) so I thought I could stump him, but he nailed it. He got people from all over the US, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He produced the specific city or town, not just the country. Now that's a good memory!
As I recall, he calls himself "the zip code guy".
Please turn in your phreaker card. Anyone who knows anything knows 555 numbers do exist. Dumbass.
hey, that's my number, at least according to Best Buy, and RadioShack!
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Not dejected all, he loosened his tie, left the building, and walked to a nearby pub, where he memorized a deck of cards for the waitress and got three free beers in return.
NOW that's an useful trick
I was wondering about the lowest number of bits in which you can stick the full order of a 52 card deck into. So far I can do it in 253 bits of information. Thats about 64 hexadecimal digit number or 78 decimal digits. So you need only some 780 decimal digits to remember order of 10 decks of cards.
I can do it in 226 bits; I would be surprised if it can be done in less.
But the manipulations required to encode/decode that sort of compressed representation is so complex it is useless as a mental technique unless you were the Rain Man and then you probably don't need it anyway.
I am Rain Man.
So said I.
most people also forget that the bbc reported some hijackers still alive and they still havent taken down there site. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/15591 51.stm/
they also forget that bush cheated on the first elections.... they also forget that we was lied to in the run uptowards the war. they also forget that gwbush dad invaded iraq in 1991 on behalf of the saudi (for oil rights maybe?) people also forget that the hijackers from 9/11 were saudis not people from iraq. they also forget that saddam never had any ties with bin laden and his terroist groups. people forget alot...
Lines they could never use again:
Honey, I forgot your birthday....
I really was going to call you the next day - but I forgot your number.
I was going to get you that more expensive present, but I couldn't remember where it came from.
I'm sorry boss, I forgot about that deadline.
The expectations would be so high nobody would ever believe them if they said they forgot something.
And if you audiate it (that is, "hear" it in your mind), does it have a rhythm?
But for the 253 I actually used an algorithm thats very easy to process. First 51 bits tell you if card is red or black, next 25 tell you for red cards if its heart or diamond, next 25 tell for black, .. then 4*12 bits to say low or high card and so on. I think I could reconstruct the deck pretty fast from that.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
246 toothpicks
I read an account of an interview between a reporter and Einstein. At the end, the reporter asked for Einstein's phone number so he could phone later if he needed to check something for the article.
Einstein replied that he couldn't remember his number, but it didn't matter, because it was in the phone book.
Smart man, Albert!
216 is impossible. log2(52!) = 225.58
Let's face it. There's nothing else to do in Blacksburg, VA. There's simply nothing there -- what else can they do except sit around and memorize numbers and patterns?
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Google's calculator says that 52 factorial is 226 bits long. (Searching for ln(52 factorial)/ln(2) and getting an answer is brutally cool). So there's an information theoretic lower bound assuming that all orderings are equally probable.
I am always impressed by these contents, especially since my short/mid-term memory is terrible.
:)
Are there any similar mid/long-term memory contests out there? I'm not exactly sure how such a contest would work, but I am reasonably convinced that I have an above average ability to remember numbers from my past that I have no good reason to be remember (SIN#, BBS#, Library Card#, Old Friends Phone#, Postal Codes, etc...). I don't think for a moment that I would be the best in the world at such a contest, but I would be very interested to see the results.
Maybe the number of punctuation marks in this post will be the basis for a distant future long-term memory contest
Yes, for secretaries and PR people. But they were all sent off on the B-ark, weren't they?
As a few people have posted now, Einstein had a terrible memory for trivial stuff like this. But who has done more to advance civilization:
The guy who can say, "Hey Bob, how you been these past 9 months, are you still at (618) 555-2324, and how are those 3 children of yours?"
Or the guy who developed the General Theory of Relativity...
I... am so confused. I can count cards well enough, but if there is some really intense system of counting cards that u guys are using here (that is easy) please explain it in easier terms for I am only slightly smarter than a simpleton :P [and probably younger and less experienced than most of you... ]
Hey, we all have to learn from someone, right?
Also, in some regions (like 201, my former digs), you can do 555-5454 (might require an area code prefix), and it'll prompt you for a phone number and, if the number is listed, it'll tell you the name and address of the person that registered that line.
At least it did that a few years ago, haven't tried since.
this isn't a sig. i type this (including the two dashes), every time i post, just to make it look like a sig.
Interesting, when was this introduced as the Ghostbusters phone number (from around 1980) is 555-2368.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
What about the number lists? The best contestants memorized about 100 digits in 5 minutes. 100 digits contain log(10^100) / log(2) = 332 bits. That's 1.1 bits per second.
So, over a lifetime, the most anyone can memorize is about (1 bit/sec)*(3600 sec/hr)*(15 hr/day)*(365 day/year)*(80 years/lifetime) = 1.6 Gigabits = 200 Megabytes. Hmm.
Im glad to see this post. I also had the Loraine memory system and had a lot of fun with it in my teen years.
Guys, this stuff really isn't that hard. There is no such thing as a "bad memory." Just an untrained one. Seriously, anyone with half a brain can learn to memorize long-digit numbers or the order of a deck of cards. I consider myself a person of average intelligence and yet I can take a randomly shuffled deck of cards and view each card in order once for less than a second and then list the cards in order or name a specific card by it's index. It just takes training. People often attribute these sorts of feats to raw ability, but the truth is you can vastly improve your ability to remember through practice.
Celebrate the finer things in life
Yeah, I got two results with 253 bits using two different algorithms, but then I devised a different algorithm that uses only 216 bits.
No, you need to recheck your math, you can't do it in 216.
I would guess your solution won't even do it in the optimal 226 since your grouping wastes a fraction of a bit in each step due to the grouping of cards and there's only a small fraction of a bit to spare in the 226 solution.
Why? Why would the Alcoholics Anonymous object about that?
"no no no"
The Major System is just one number memorization system. There are others. You can make up your own if you don't like the Major, as I did.
Errm... that's not remembering anything new. It's simply recalling details of your office that you work in every day.
If I read out numbers that seem meaningless to you, and you use the people in your office as a mnemonic to remember them, that's different.
But personally, I've little interest in rote learning. I'd much rather understand how the world works and be able to explain it from principles than to simply have meaningless tables of data in my head. The former is applicable to more than just pre-determined questions.
For example, which would you rather know: the date at which world war two broke out, out the sequence of events since world war two, and their causality? With knowledge, you can backtrack to the right year from other dates you do remember, and, much more, you can actually use the information for new ideas and insights.
I wonder how many computer geeks have memory troubles? I have a theory that all those requesters and reminders and pop-up hints help us so much that they make us forget how to remember things. My memory is like a sieve these days. Although it could be other things, so I'm not sure.
But some of them are. For instance, I used to have a copy of U2's "Walk On" available, which is no longer the case. However, I can recall it internally with relative exactitude, down to the entrances of the background parts, vocal inflections, effects, and so forth. Moreover, it's represented in structured form, not as pure audio; when bits become less exact it's more similar to human memory becoming less exact (e.g. forgetting words from the lyric, playing it back in the wrong key since I don't usually bother to have a pitch reference handy) than classical-computer memory dropping bits (e.g. lots of noise in the audio stream).
I suppose I'm a sort of musical person, so this may not be the norm, but it is certainly not impossible for humans to store music and video in memory, at higher or lower quality as desired.
but I forgot my password
= 9J =
Which will be implicitly known from the other 51.
I was planning on going, but sadly I forgot which day it was on.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
"Where's Ram?"
"He didn't make it."
phozz
Your Mr. Magoo method sounds much better.
Then you've missed the whole point of memory systems, that the associations *must work for you*. In the first memory software package you pointed us to, one of the touted features is the ability to change which phonemes associate with which letters.
...)
Strong associations are created when you find a visual or auditory link between a number and the corresponding letter or phoneme, like '2' and 'N' (which contains two downstrokes), that makes sense to you.
There is a visual system in which '2' is represented by a duck (similar shapes), and a the numeral '8' associates with an hourglass.
Another number memory system uses visual words which rhyme with the number words (one->bun, two-shoe, three->tree,
I'll check out the software packages, they look interesting.
Have at it, man. There are lots of cool resources out there. I have enjoyed playing with some of them, since doing that research!
Peace!
I suppose I'm a sort of musical person
Not if you like U2, you're not.
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information
George A. Miller
originally published in The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97
http://www.well.com/user/smalin/miller.html
A few years ago at a local watering hole we had the pleasure of hanging out with a brilliant but misguided man nicknamed 'Fletch'. After several drinks someone dared all to recite the powers of two for a whole hour. Well, we all laughed, except Fletch. He started rambling them off... "2, 4, 8, 16, 32....". He must have been doing that for about 20 minutes before he gave up, took a last swig of his beer and then left. Beyond 32768, I had no idea if he was correct with any of them or not, but it sure was interesting and fairly funny to hear.
You know, I find memorization of things is vastly dependent on how fine tuned your concept of the thing is.
Take for example chess, which Im sure alot of slashdotters play. It really isn't all that difficult to re-construct an entire game from scratch. Of course for someone who has never played chess before, imagine if they had to memorize the positions mindlessly.
Those people that play chess can feel the intention behind each move, and the strategy that is being formulated by both sides. Their concept of each position is that much more defined because of their understanding, much more so that mindless memorizations of grid patterns.
Here's another example with words. If i recited to you
"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
It would be trivial to ask you to recite this sentence back to me.
But think about what you just did. That's essentially equivalent to a 40-45 digit number you just memorized, base 26 (depending on whether you count the spaces) as opposed to base 10 for digits of pi. we dont have any significant correlation with random numbers eg. 4590954 except that its a number.
effective methods of memorization would simply call for one to associate that number with a more meaningful concept.
So who do you get when you call 555-2804 in Quantico (or anywhere else for that matter ;-?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck