Mnemonic devices

What is a PAO:

Creating a mnemonic tool for memory is a complicated process. This last weekend I created a system as described in Joshua Foer's book "Moon walking with Einstein".

I am very happy to share my non-offensive worksafe personal system with you all in this link.

The system break down is simple -- mild variation from Foer's system.
Every number from double digit 00, to double digit 99 has a person, action, and object that tells a short narrative. When you need to remember a 6 digit number (say 902378) you decompose it into 90, 23, 78 and take the person from 90, doing the action from 23, to the object from 78. In my system this is an Inuit flying with a shadowy monster in her hand. Foer's system allows you to have a person doing an action, and just having an object associated like Michael Jackson moonwalking with a white glove. I made about 8 of these types of PAO and found I preferred transitive objects to work with all my transitive nouns. John pokes a hornets nest (I just made that up now) vs. Einstein wrote with chalk. The problem for me was I could see Einstein with chalk writing (SOV) but for order preservation I should remember Einstein writing with chalk (SVO). I did do this to two of my PAOs but for me it was a powerful direct object association, not an indirect object.

To remember strings longer than 6 digits one would place these vivid PAOs in a well known physical location.  My office has five desks on one wall and a door. So I would place one PAO on my desk (witchdoctor painting a skate) one PAO on the empty desk beside me (Apollo painting a swan) and a PAO in the doorway (A fireman sailing on a voodoo doll) to remember 241308091302012624 for example

As you see in my system I have taken interesting people doing interesting things. In certain cases the number they are associated with is meaningful to the imagery used to remember it. A crystal ball is circular so I gave it a 00 designation and associated a gypsy mystic gazing into a crystal ball as 00. I used the shape of 0 to create a bunch of PAOs. 60 is a goblin hiding round coins, 70 is Frodo the hobbit carrying a golden ring, 80 is a cartoon character placing a white round "Go" game piece (607080 together is a goblin carrying a "go" piece)

Numbers 01-09s objects symbolize a number a silver spoon (long like 1), a swan, a tree, a fork, a star, some sticks, an axe, a tennis racket. Some sound like the number some look like the number.

Numbers 00 -26 are also letters.
Apollo is A,
Bubblegum is B
a Crow is C

Apollo eclipsing a tennis racket (my original "09" and "A")

However as 00 is O (the 15th letter of the alphabet) I made 15 no letter at all. However I found it was easier to remember if E (the fifth letter) were in the 15th place and F was in the 16th place. I think an ideal system would be constructed using each letter in it's location in the alphabet to help the memory. I.e. Apollo (A -letter 1)  eclipsing a candle stick (the candle represents 01 too), rather than Apollo eclipsing a tennis racket (A racket sort of looks like a 09). Definitely may change the 00-26 part of my system yet to fit this ideal, but already I'm growing attached to my images and their corresponding numbers!

(Edit -- I changed it! 01-26 are now A - Z associated no longer associated to the tennis racket 09 is just the ninth letter I, kind of glad as the tennis racket is not a good visual for 09, time to forget then re-remember them all! Used Google docs to add the list to my iPhone "Flashcards" app)


How to create your own PAO:

Spend a weekend writing a list and add significant people you can imagine vividly doing characteristic or uncharacteristic things. Ghandi swallowing an axe was uncharacteristic, a coyote pooping was pretty characteristic for a western guy like me. When you think of objects think of things that will be saucy, funny, disturbing or otherwise memorable for your combinations.

How to assign numbers to your PAO:

After 26 assigning numbers to your PAO can become hard. What I did was select groups of five PAOs and rank them on memorability, I took all the PAOs I ranked fifth (or hardest to remember) and removed about half of them, and about one quarter of the 4th ranked items. As I had made 127 PAOs (I was on a roll) I ended up with the best of the bunch. Some I don't like remained (A clown juggling colourful balls i.e. 68) but were very vivid.

I then placed the PAOs on the numbers based on what number I felt I could associate with it as I explained above with 60,70 and 80. 28 looked like someone sitting and headlights to me so I made it Vin Diesel driving a sportcar. Even if you make them randomly you should be able to rationalize a visualization for the pair of digits as the PAO for effectiveness I believe (could be wrong).

Good luck making your PAOs, let me know what you want to memorize. I am thinking the infectious disease chapter of the ACP medicine textbook I own.

For more on memory check out the three cool links I added on the navigation bar up top.

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