Death Memory: Effective Memorization
Thu Jul 22 17:57:26 2010
An unusual but very effective method to memorize large amounts of data for perfect recall in the future
In this post, I'd like to share with you a method of memorizing data, basis for which I gathered in a book called: "How To Remember Names And Faces: How To Develop A Good Memory ". Depending on your upbringing and beliefs, the method might seem bizarre and weird, but the fact that it's stunningly effective is why I plan on using it as the primary means of memorizing my stuff.
Due to lack of time, I've managed to read only the first couple of chapters in this book. The idea of the method in the book is to memorize certain specific items in a specific order; these items will later serve as a basis for ordering other things you wish to memorize. When you need to remember certain data in a given order, you create associations of data elements with the original items, order of which you already memorized.
The author of that book noted that when creating such associations, gruesome ideas and imaginations often create the strongest memory imprints. In the method I've developed, I've excluded the ordering and amplified "gruesomeness factor" to psychopathic proportions. The results astonished me – I didn't even have to go all the way with the original plan (I'll mention the details at the end of this post).
I'll describe the method to you using my example. As I am intensely studying physics, my experimental data consists of the names of subatomic particles and force carriers. The result was this: 16 names, each having a corresponding symbol, mass, charge and type of a particle. Everything but the type is unique, and I've had five types in total; this gives us 69 linked pieces of information to remember. Using "Death Memory" technique, I could reproduce all that with 100% accuracy after playing out my "death stories" in my mind, twice for each set of data.
In total I had four sheets of paper that look something like this picture (click on it to see larger version). You'll notice that for each particle I have included an image along with the data set. The pictures are not required, but they certainly enhance the ease of creating visualizations – if you have time, find and use the pictures. I've picked the images based on the first thing that came to my mind when I heard the particle name. "Muon" makes me think of mooing cows, "tau" makes me think of Japanese samurai. Since "neutrino" means "little one", the pictures of baby cow for "muon neutrino" and baby samurai for "tau neutrino" did the trick for me.
I will now describe the mental "movie" I've created for each particle that allowed me to memorize the charges and masses quite well. Don't worry about Greek letters and various charge units you might not know – the important part is to notice that I am linking each peace of data into my mental movie. Keep in mind: these imaginations are only done to strengthen the memorization effect, don't judge yourself by the vividness of the images; you're not a psychopath – the more these mental movies disturb you, the larger the memorizing effect.
I see 105 million (105 MeV means 105 million eV) mooing cows about to get slaughtered. I see the number "105 MeV" float above them. When they moo, Greek letter μ ("mu") appears near their mouths. As the cows get killed, there are less and less of them left; thus the charge of my particle is negative and since the whole cow gets killed each time, the charge is of a full electron (-e).
Even just visualizing these arbitrary symbols and numbers in my "movie" makes them stick, always try to incorporate the data into the "movie" in as many ways as you can.
Now, my second particle...
I see a baby cow (the image helps...). The cow goes "moo", thus this is a "muon" - baby means "little one", therefore it's a "neutrino". I already knew well that neutrinos are denoted with "v", thus I only needed to memorize the subscript "μ"; that I already memorized from the previous particle. When we memorized the "muon", this baby cow's parents got slaughtered – it has no one left now and it's crying all alone by itself: this means the particle has no mass and no charge.
The samurai in the image just killed a person by chopping off their head. That person now looks like Greek letter "τ", which also means the name of the particle is "tau". The samurai is very powerful. His swing has 1.8 GeV of energy, I see this written on his sword – this means that particle's mass-charge equivalent is 1.8 GeV. A whole human is now dead, disappeared. This means to me that the charge is negative and a whole number of an electron charge (-e).
The final particle on my first sheet – the image of a baby samurai. That indicates to me a neutrino ("little one") of the same name as of the previously memorized samurai – "tau". Once again, the symbol is "v" with subscript of samurai's symbol, "τ". Baby samurai didn't kill anyone yet, he just watched the murder, and is now shocked and is sitting with his mouth open (like letter "O" or zero) – that means the charge and mass of the particle are zero (0, 0).
The same concept is done on all of your data. You can see that I had some links between my separate "mental movies"; you can create a single long movie that involves all your data or several that include only the chunk of data that you feel is appropriate.
Additional Steps
As I've mentioned in the beginning, I was planning to add extra steps to the method, but it proved to be much more effective than I expected. In any case, should you find single associations of images to "death movies" insufficient for long term accurate reproduction of the data you're trying to memorize, repeat the process. Once you memorize the movies in the first sheet, change the pictures and imagine new movies. The more links you create to the same piece of information, the stronger it will settle in your brain.
I hope that you – just as I – will find this technique very useful to accurately remember large sets of data, whatever it may be.
Comments
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Fri Jul 23 08:46:12 2010
Intense...I have to try that again later whilst not at work ! lol :)