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from the I-forgot-what-I-was-going-to-write dept.
If you wanted to pinpoint the most absurdly geeky event in the world calendar, it would be difficult to beat the binary numbers challenge at the World Memory Championships. In it, a bevy of trained memory masters fight it out over 30 minutes to memorise as many 1s and 0s in order as they possibly can.
Back when this was my idea of a good time, I was able to "do" more than 2,000 1s and 0s in the half-hour. My then arch-rival, Dr Gunther Karsten of Germany, was not afraid to tell me this level of performance was "really quite lame". He could do 3,200. The current world record is over 4,000: more than two 1s and 0s every second.
Dig past the mystery of such feats, and you discover a set of techniques and an approach to learning that is full of strikingly simple wisdom and fun. Even if, quite sensibly, you've no interest in learning to recite computer code, the memory techniques that enable such performance are a treasure trove of insight into how to motivate and direct the learning brain.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:40PM
TFA never did get around to explaining how he remembered 2000 sequences of 0's and 1's.
In fact TFA seemed pretty thin on details but long on fanciful suggestions.
For him, in his brain, it all boils down to thinking of something as if it were something else: "Picture cytoplasm as ectoplasm from ghostbusters." That "goofy association" wouldn't work for me.
For me, its sufficient to learn the meaning of words, or word roots. I don't need to think of something else to know the meaning of the word, and doing so would be a waste of time, a huge distraction, and would lead to wrong results. I'd be just as likely to forget the goofy association, as I would the definition of the word in question.
His method perhaps works for him. But it seems hardly universal.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dyingtolive on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:58PM
The goofy association is one that I've heard touted often though it's not really worked out well for me either.
I find it's easier for me to remember something if I've written it down. Generally I can remember it well enough without referring to it, or at least the majority of it. I don't know if it's something solidifying in the thought process of writing, or if it's having something visual to remember. If I just hear something, or get told something in passing though? It's gone in five minutes.
Of course, this leads to the silly outcome of having notebook after notebook laying around with a few things scribbled on each page such as that grocery list I don't actually bother taking to the store with me, just because I needed something to put in my head for a day or so.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:17PM
Of course, this leads to the silly outcome of having notebook after notebook laying around
There's an app for that. ;-)
Or, there are a hundred apps for that, and the problem becomes one of remembering which app has what stuff in it.
These days I just try to remember where I can find answers rather than trying to remember all the answers I learned
in the past.
Learning methods seem to be quite common and diverse, which suggests to me that there is more than one way to wire a brain.
One method recommended to me, which DOES seem to work for me is:
1) learn/read it today,
2) revisit it tomorrow or the day after, and
3) Revisit it again in a week if you really need it to stick around for a long time.
From then on, even if it is something you only occasionally need, even infrequent use will suffice to refresh the knowledge.
I make no assertions this will work for anyone else.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:01PM
Symbol sequence memory isn't all that great for sequences of more than 7 symbols. What makes it possible (easy?) to remember things like 10 digit phone numbers is grouping the latin characters into larger symbols:
321-555-1212 would be hard to remember as 3-2-1-5-5-5-1-2-1-2, but as 3 familiar groupings, it's a piece of cake.
Now, how guys make 2000 sequences of 01010010101010101010100011110010 stick in their heads is beyond me, but I believe that it's not too hard to build a "vocabulary" of 4000+ symbols that are readily available for sequence storage/recovery.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:03AM
You can compress into streaks and remember whether it started on zero or one.
01010010101010101010100011110010
start=0
streak_length=1111 2 111111111111111 342 11
Then compress into streaks of streaks:
4 , 1
1 , 2
15, 1
1 , 3
1 , 4
1 , 2
2, 1
One initial value and seven pairs would be doable.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:22AM
I thought maybe the way to do it would be to memorize the ASCII table and translate your 4000 bits into 4000/8 = 500 letters and symbols. Those letters might be more easily memorized. Or maybe take them 8 at a time and turn them into decimal and remember the decimal. Or hex maybe?
Seems like the ascii table memorization would be easier (only 256 things for permanent memory and many are in an obvious order).
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:55AM
Steve Roberts pedaled around on a recumbent bike in the 1980s with 4 buttons on each hand grip. He typed "chorded ascii" into a TRS-80 Model 100 while pedaling. iirc, he also had some ham radio way to send and receive text while on the road.
http://teknomadics.com/2011/10/the-original-technomad/ [teknomadics.com]
I met him at an event, he said it wasn't very hard to learn this "keyboard" -- has any one here tried this (for regular typing)?