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Secrets of a Memory Champion
Hugh Pickens writes writes "We've all heard of people who claim to have 'photographic memories.' Now Joshua Foer writes in the NY Times magazine (reg. may be required) that a 'skilled memory' can be acquired and proves it by explaining how he trained his brain to became a world-class memory athlete winning first place in the speed cards competition last year at the USA Memory Championship by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute forty seconds. According to Foer, memory training is a lost art that dates from antiquity. 'Today we have books, photographs, computers and an entire superstructure of external devices to help us store our memories outside our brains, but it wasn't so long ago that culture depended on individual memories,' writes Foer. 'It was considered a form of character-building, a way of developing the cardinal virtue of prudence and, by extension, ethics.' Foer says that the secret to supermemory is a system of training and discipline that works by creating 'memory palaces' on the fly filled with lavish images, painting a scene in the mind so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. 'Photographic memory is a detestable myth. Doesn't exist. In fact, my memory is quite average,' concludes Ed Cooke who recently invented a code that allows him to convert every number from 0 to 999,999,999 into a unique image that he can then deposit in a memory palace. 'What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly.'"
I think Ed Cooke's memory is as average as he claims. For example, I betcha he can't remember where my car keys are either.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
... who recently invented a code that allows him to convert every number from 0 to 999,999,999 into a unique image that he can then deposit in a memory palace.
Hey, I can easily recognize and recall any one of those numbers even without the mental chicanery!
Having grown up with a guy who had a true photographic memory - I call shenanigans. I agree a person can train his memory to work remarkably better; but photographic memories are ... different. I don't know how to describe it, but It's pretty obviously not just a case of a well-trained brain.
#DeleteChrome
The claims here are basically sound. The Medievals had a problem with both literacy and the cost of writing materials. Should anyone want to know more about 'older' memory systems, I would recommend, Curruthers, M. (1990), *The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture*, Cambridge U.P. This book is not only fascinating, it is also well written.
Sometimes, reinventing, or rediscovering something is useful, I seem to recall. *grin*
I think that the difference is that all the gurus are telling everybody to do what works for them, where these guys are actually writing up and studying different techniques and finding that different lists work for different people.
I guess a summary list of practical research you can read through would be really interesting if anyone knows a good one.... There was something recently that the only proven memorisation technique is to use some kind of exponential back off. Even a special program to do that. Unfortunately I can't remember where and when it was discussed :-) ..
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I've heard all this before. You can make cute little memory associations that will let you easily remember a really long number, or a sequence of cards, or whatever.
That's great if you want to amaze your friends or count cards in Vegas, but i don't think that's going to be of much practical use in my day to day life. Certainly not compared to the effort required. What i really need is a way to remember how i solved a particular programming problem six months ago. Or what the best algorithm is for a particular task. Things that can't be summed up as a simple number. Some people get asked "do you know how to do X" and they say "Why yes! I dealt with that six months ago, and this is how you solve the problem!" When posed with the same question i usually say "Uh, i dealt with something like that six months ago, let me see if i wrote it down in my notes." If that fails (which it often does, since i can never be sure what i'll need to remember later at the time that it happens) i'll spend fifteen minutes (or more) searching through old code trying to remind myself how exactly i dealt with it.
So some people (namely me) have far worse than average memory (which definitely implies there are others with far better than average memory, despite what he says) but his method certainly isn't going to help me, and i can't think of any kind of simple training that would.
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This makes sense - after all, we've had culture for far* longer than we've had writing, and it stands to reason that effective transmission of information across generational boundaries would be an evolutionarily beneficial trait.
People seem to forget that millions of years of evolution must have left a mark on us; the entirety of recorded history so far is nothing but a strange coda to an evolutionary record that spans an unimaginable depth of time, and for almost all of that deep time the only way to maintain knowledge (a gigantic evolutionary advantage!) was for someone to memorize it.
*by "far" I mean on the order of a hundred thousand years
Bazinga.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
It offered real techniques that simply work. I adapted some of it to help me remember names. For a friend named Carice, I imagined her careening down an icy road with a look of terror on her face. Car + Ice = Carice.
Another, Flo (real name!) I couldn't remember so I picked out that she has to use oxygen. The oxygen "flo's" into her nose.
Simple things like that really do work, it doesn't have to be elaborate.
Oh, another one. I kept mixing up the names of two brothers who looked very much alike, except that one was much taller than the other (about 6'6"). So, I looked at their names: Lewis and Drake. On an alphabet counted upwards from the bottom, Lewis is higher than Drake! Great, so the tall one is Lewis.
I would love to remember more things that aren't easy to remember automagically. Like, why do I remember that a MIG 25 used drone engines with a overhaul time of 100hrs and that mach 3 would kill the engines in short order, but can't remember the process for some stupid Windows thing that I do every other day? Seems like my head is full of useless trivia, but when I think about those things guess what pops into my head? Images.
Images + association = Memory.
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This technique is useless for those like me who have no mind's eye. (Yes, I experience mental images in dreams, but I can't even summon up a circle when awake.) This affliction runs so much against the grain of modern theories of vision and thought (inter alia) that even the experts dispute its existence. See http://www.imagery-imagination.com/non-im.htm and the references. I've never met anyone else with the condition, but I should get out more. I'm guessing it occurs more often among IT people, but who knows? Any fellow Slashdotters with me on this?
True. Lots of stuff is trainable, but is inborn for some people. Strength, for example. Some people are naturally stronger than others, but you can make up for the difference by working out in the gym. Absolute hearing (recognizing the pitch of a note of music): my dad has always been able to do it and can't remember a time when he couldn't, nor did he understand why others couldn't. But many musicians need to train quite hard at it. To some it comes naturally after years of making music, to others it doesn't.
Sometimes it's nature, sometimes it's nurture, sometimes it's a bit of both.
In any case, it's good to know that memory can be trained too. My memory sucks. My wife has always had excellent memory (not quite photographic) without any kind of training (other than regular study, which is also trains your memory, I guess).
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
From the article:
What's wrong? Can't remember the full name?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Do not underestimate the power of mnemonics; They can greatly improve your performance in anything you do!
My first memory course was, "You Can Remember" by Dr. Bruno Furst. It came in a slipcover with twelve small lessons and a "dictionary" that converted numbers to mnemonics. It was advertised extensively in Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and Mechanix Illustrated magazines in the 50's and 60's. I used some of those techniques for years, but I did not get really interested in memory systems until my 20's. I found a book called, "How to Develop a Super-Power Memory" by Harry Lorayne. I found it very useful, and it is the first book I ever owned I only had to read once to remember the contents. Since then I've acquired a good number of books on mnemonics, and, although there is much repetition from book to book, I occasionally find a new approach or insight that helps my learning.
If you are a student I reccommend, "Brainbooster" by Finkle, along with a general memory book such as, "How to Develop a Super-Power Memory" (Lorayne), "The Memory Book" (Lorayne and Lucas), "Use Your Perfect Memory" (Buzan), or "Learning How to Learn" (Lucas).
At one time a mnemonist named Dan Mikels memorized the entire LA phone book. My favorite of his practical contributions are, "Speed Spanish (I-III)" available from National Dynamics ( http://www.nationaldynamics.com/ ) and his mentorship of the SuperCamp ( http://www.supercamp.com/ ). I have had a number of friends who learned highly-passable Spanish (and other languages) in three weeks to a month.
"Dr. Blair's Spanish in No Time" (and other languages) builds extensively on memory techniques.
Jerry Lucas (former NBA player and Phi Beta Kappa member) has written some cool courses for himself and his company, Lucas Learning Systems. His book on Spanish is outstanding, He has a great book on "Becoming a Math Wizard", and even has an extensive program to memorize the New Testament. I'm a little disappointed that he didn't complete his series on grammar (I didn't even know there were 58 rules for capitalization!), and I wish he had written more on other subjects.
Pick up a book like, "50 Economics Ideas Everyone Should Know" or "Science 1001" and use the peg techniques to create mnemonic links to the ideas in such a way you will never forget them. This will give you a foundation for expanding your knowledge in a very practical way.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
If you want to read up on the topics of memory systems, here are some terms to Google:
Loci - a memory system to "walk a path" in your mind, placing objects at predictable locations along the path. Then you re-walk it, and can "see" what objects were left there. Links: 1 2
Major System - a system that translates digits to consonants, so that numbers can be pictured as words: Links: 1 2
Link System - a system to chain together 2 objects, so that a list of arbitrary length can be remembered 2 objects at a time. 1 2
Dominic System - a system that converts numeric values (typically 2 or 3 digit numbers) to memorable people. Links: 1 2
Memory Palace - a way of using loci on a massive scale Link
That should get you started. Follow links on the wikipedia page, and you'll know more than you ever wanted to know.
I've found memory techniques VERY helpful in business, and I amaze people on a day-to-day basis with my memory (which was extremely poor before I began studying the subject). Now I'm the guy who the office always goes to, when they are trying to remember how we handled a past situation, or what's the name of that customer/product/technique, or whatever.
Heh, I took the opposite approach. "Why bother training myself to remember where I left my keys? I have a wife for that!" ;)
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I can't comment on this dude having a normal memory or otherwise, but he certainly has a pretty closed mind. There's a big difference between a well trained mind and a true photographic memory. Some people just remember *everything*. It's not something they train themselves to do, or use a technique, it's something physically different about their brain that makes it work that way.
That you believe the myth doesn't make you more open minded.
*IF* there were true photographic memory, then the prizes at these world memory championships would be scooped up by people that have it. But they're not. They're won by ordinary people with pretty average memories who dedicate their spare time to mastering memory techniques.
"Photographic memory" is the stuff of magicians, hucksters and B movie thrillers.
... but his reasoning skills are not. Otherwise, he wouldn't prove a statement ("Everyone can train their memory to the level of a champion") with a sample size of one ("I trained my memory to the level of a champion"). There should be a name for this. Hm. The "I can do it so everyone can do it"-fallacy?
Perfect pitch is quite rare in Westerners. Mozart was considered special (in part) because he had it and could name the notes in church bells.
But in China, which uses a tone-based language, 1 out of 10 people have perfect pitch. And this isn't true in other Asian countries that don't use tone. So it certainly is not just an innate skill that some people have.
Personally, I find brains to be fascinating things, with a lot of really interesting facilities. Once you've trained with a device long enough (a car, a waldo, whatever) your brain will actually incorporate it into your automatic actions as if it was part of the body, offloading the work from the neocortex, meaning you can do it smoothly and without needing to think through it. It's also why people tend to flinch when people hit their cars.
In the case of memory, our brains know that if information is readily accessible (say, the list of presidents of the US), then it doesn't need to memorize it, instead retaining the key parts (we've had somewhere around 40 presidents, that Washington was the first, Obama is the current, etc.) It's actually kind of like how the caches work in your computer - retaining the most important and most used information and letting it take a while to find obscure information.
This also explains the phenomenon of instant internet asshat punditry. Because it's so easy to locate specific dates on the internet (the Battle of Manzikert was when?) that critics on Slashdot and elsewhere will criticize someone for getting the date off by a couple years because they pulled it out of their grey matter (i.e. they're actually experts on the subject) because they 'know' better because they looked it up on Wikipedia. So they think the actual expert is stupid, because the asshat 'knows better', though in reality he doesn't have usually get the context or relevance of the raw facts he pulls from wikipedia. Case in point: go back through the archives and look at the threads on here relating to the BP oil spill disaster. You'll see instant experts claiming that "BP should have know better than to put blowout preventers using blah blah blah" when if you'd gone to all that people posting in the thread a week before and asked them in person if they knew what a blowout preventer was, the percentage would be pretty close to zero. /. is a pretty highly educated group of folks - I'm sure there are some people that have studied them just 'cause - but certainly not in the numbers that were chiming in here with their opinions after the accident. (Captain Hindsight and all that.)
*IF* there were true photographic memory, then the prizes at these world memory championships would be scooped up by people that have it. But they're not. They're won by ordinary people with pretty average memories who dedicate their spare time to mastering memory techniques.
This is an excellent point, but it is worth mentioning that there is a different sense in which some people do have a limited kind of "photographic memory", although I don't believe this justifies the use of the term in the ordinary sense, which applies to an empty set of individuals.
The case I'm thinking of was discovered in an experiment dealing with visual persistence. The experiment involved look at two images with a stereoscope. Both images were random black-and-white pixels. The idea was that where the images were identical, the viewer would see them as flat in the stereoscope, but if they had regions that differed there would be a 3D effect. The viewer looked at the images with both eyes and then closed one eye. In most people the 3D effect in the mis-matched part of the images (a square in the center, I think) persisted for a second or two. But in a few people it apparently persisted more-or-less indefinitely, suggesting some kind of visual memory that was pixel-level-accurate and relatively long term.
I haven't read the research in question, so this has all the veracity of "something I heard on the Internet from some guy who heard it from someone else."
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Yeah, you're not kidding. He seems to have remarkable visual cognition. I can't do that. My "mind's eye" is not an eye. If I close my eyes and "picture something" I don't get a picture. The best I can do is think about something which for me is an entirely linguistic process, there is no visual component.
I mean, try this. Close your eyes and picture an apple. Is it red or green? I get the feeling that some people actually see an apple, and it actually registers as red or green in their brain before the question is even asked. When I try to picture an apple, all I can do is think "apple". If I'm asked what color it is, I don't know because there is no apple, just a generic apple thought.
So yeah, this is not a technique everyone can do. Some people just don't have visual capabilities like that.
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*IF* there were true photographic memory, then the prizes at these world memory championships would be scooped up by people that have it. But they're not. They're won by ordinary people with pretty average memories who dedicate their spare time to mastering memory techniques.
Perhaps ... but if you had a photographic memory, don't you think you'd have better things to do with your time than bore yourself with memory contests?
Most of the truly powerful memory systems relying on visual imagination; sadly, not everyone has a powerful visual imagination/memory. Some people can imagine a whole room filled with intricate details, other people have trouble picturing their wife's face after 20 years of being together. The reason people don't understand this is because everyone assumes that they're normal. People with visual imaginations assume that everyone has one, that people who can't use memory places must just be doing it wrong. People without visual imagination assume that no one does, that memory places are an elaborate metaphor or something. I myself have an excellent memory and a powerful imagination, but struggle to retrieve detailed images from memories. I tried for months to apply memory places without making any progress because my brain simply isn't wired that way.
Close your eyes and picture an apple. Is it red or green? I get the feeling that some people actually see an apple, and it actually registers as red or green in their brain before the question is even asked.
More than that. I first see a Red Delicious, then a Granny Smith. Now a Yellow Delicious, and my current supermarket's display of apples, including Fujis, Pink Ladys, etc. Prior supermarkets I've been to, including ones from when I was a kid. The smell of fresh apple, the smell of decaying apples by the cross country race course at my middle school. The sights and sounds of the hornets buzzing on those decaying apples, the dread I always felt running past them, hoping the hornets were too drunk to attack. The burning in my lungs at that part of the course. My middle school floor plan. The day I went back to visit old teachers as an adult. Seeing that the Apple ][ computers were on display instead of in use. Apple ][, that's what I see in my mind's eye.
...that an Albert Einstein icon is associated with a post about memorizing. Why? Because, when asked why he was looking up his own phone number in the phone book, Einstein said:
"Never memorize something that you can look up."