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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?
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...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.
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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
Ohwait...
...Slashdot editors could do that.
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.
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?
Now that would be hilarious. I'd love to see Chris Rocks routine generalized to Banach spaces and arbitrary metrics.
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
..but can they be mounted as a mass storage volume on Linux ?
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.
Einstein's brain was probably wired completely different. I bet he would forget to pickup milk on the way home, instead, constantly thinking about something grand. I tend to be HORRIBLE at memorization, yet can solve problems others find difficult. Everybody is different, it is just a matter of what skills and to what degree we use them.
Editors that could remember the stories that they put up the day before.
Is incredible how powerfull can the human brain be. If these people can do that imagine what could Einstein do ?
Likely, not that much better. Read the article. These people use an assortment of mnemonic devices to remember these large chunks of data. If you tried to remember a series of cards, you would get lost in the volume of data. But if you remember each three cards in order as "person action object", then you can remember the sequence of cards as a story, and that is orders of magnitude easier to remember, because it has real meaning, whereas a sequence of cards is essentially meaningless. The brain sucks at remembering things without meaning, and excels at things that have meaning. That seems to be because our memory is inherently associative. We remember things by associating them to other things. That way the more associations you can make between a new factoid and existing concepts in your brain, the more easily you'll remember it.
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?!
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.
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".