With a system derived from that you can quite easily learn to memorise a shuffled pack of playing cards, by which I mean: someone shuffles the pack of 52 cards and deals them out in front of you, one card every couple of seconds. An hour later you are able to recite the sequence of cards forwards or backwards. (But you can't do random access! What you've done is associate each card with its neighbours, so you can step through them forwards or backwards, without necessarily knowing which direction is which.)
1. the NATO alphabet. (Alfa, bravo, charlie, delta…) It's surprisingly easy to memorize: it will only take you a few sittings of practice. And it's useful, for when you need to turn letters into words. And then people cutely wonder if you're ex-military.
2. I tie a small ribbon to my luggage. It could be anything: string, tinsel. If you're familiar with wine glass charms, same idea. It makes the bag identifiable from distance, so long as the charm is in line of sight. It does not, remarkably, stop strangers from grabbing the wrong bag, but it does get funny if they insist they recognize their bag when you ask them "you tied sparkly pink ribbon to your bag?"
The NATO alphabet is an uncanny intersection of being highly memorable and having carefully engineered properties across several dimensions. Whoever designed it did a brilliant job.
It is sticky as hell and surprisingly useful. I do assume that people who know it are ex-military but that isn’t entirely reliable in the US. A lot of other people picked it up, in part because it is so easy to learn by osmosis.
Was really helpfull when making international phone call to services like IRS or sometime good providers. Trying to spell out my french name and long adress or some order number with my strong accent was such a pain until then ^^
I know it from amateur radio, emergency services, and maritime communications, it's "officially" the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, shorthanded by some as the NATO Alphabet.
Others may know it by virtue of being fans of, or simply exposed to the Bloodhound Gang.
( FWiW I'm neither in nor from middle North America )
This was originated (or at least popularized) in an episode of Archer from season 1. It remains maybe my favorite 5 minutes of comedy ever out to screen. It's just so tight!
An anecdote: I easily remember short-ish (pins, phone numbers) number combinations, learn completely new alphabets of new languages easily enough, just like their words, but I struggle to learn the NATO alphabet: the words have no meaning and I don't perceive them as atomic enough like a letter or number is, so it mostly looks like a large amount of random noise to me, like having to learn pi to 100 digits.
I forced myself to learn the NATO alphabet recently by using some online flashcards. Nothing complex, just shows the letter and I have to recall the word, then click to see if I got it right. Didn't take very long to get it down, and I go through them every few days to verify recall.
On a side note, the NATO alphabet is quite normalised in the Netherlands - most telephone operators will default to it when providing you information and likewise there is an expectation on you to use it when providing spelling sensitive information such as emails.
I tend to visualize the position of the numbers on a phone's keypad. The sequence is then the travel to touch them in order. For some reason, I find easier to memorize that shape than the single digits.
That’s so cool! I do this with colours - every number has a colour so I remember me imagining seeing the colour combination of a number. Like 438 is green, yellow, purple
That’s so cool! It’s funny how memory works, I’m very visual in my mind when I need to remember facts it’s usually through some kind of scene or memory castle-like setup. Sometimes, I can remember the page or place where something is written so I “read” it in my mind in order to reproduce the fact.
I choose from a range of lockers that are years I was single. Who did I date that year?
I also set the combination to all zeroes, to scramble my combination after locking. Easier getting in and out with fixed muscle memory, and easy to confirm this is my locker. No one else does this.
I find myself rhyming the number in my head in a specific way that’s a little goofy but memorable. Just image how radio announcers say phone numbers and you have an idea.
I like this a lot better because you don’t have to visualize the way a number looks to remember the association, you say the word in your mind and just mentally say the number that rhymes. Seems faster to get the hang of
I listened to the audiobook version of Dominic O'Brien's Quantum Memory Power years ago. He explains this system, along with several others, like memory palaces. The mnemonics he uses for numbering are:
Combining it with the journey method helps remember longer sequences. The funny thing is that you might remember the number two by imagining a giant swan in the next room. When you don't need to remember it anymore, you imagine yourself throwing a grenade into the room and blowing up the swan. It really works!
Darren Brown's Tricks of the Mind is generally about his life history in becoming a mentalist, but it has a lot of fun tidbits about methods to get over traumatic memories, amp yourself up for things you don't want you to, defuse arguments/fights, and it was the first place I ever heard of memory palaces.
Talking about memorising numbers, one should definitely mention this well-known system which maps consonants to digits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system
With a system derived from that you can quite easily learn to memorise a shuffled pack of playing cards, by which I mean: someone shuffles the pack of 52 cards and deals them out in front of you, one card every couple of seconds. An hour later you are able to recite the sequence of cards forwards or backwards. (But you can't do random access! What you've done is associate each card with its neighbours, so you can step through them forwards or backwards, without necessarily knowing which direction is which.)
I've been Gematria since I am 6yo.
e.g. As a 48yo, I remember about 24 ATM PINs for many cards I had over the years, since they are all funny and memorable 4 letter names / words.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria
I started it as a person told my father his phone number (6 digits as Gematria that translate to "a cloth in my mouth")
234-281 (בגד בפי)
Don't try and remember the number, just remember the location.
We're hardwired for spatial awareness.
This. I could never recall the numbers, yet i always find the right one, just by a feeling for where it is.
This makes me think of two things:
1. the NATO alphabet. (Alfa, bravo, charlie, delta…) It's surprisingly easy to memorize: it will only take you a few sittings of practice. And it's useful, for when you need to turn letters into words. And then people cutely wonder if you're ex-military.
2. I tie a small ribbon to my luggage. It could be anything: string, tinsel. If you're familiar with wine glass charms, same idea. It makes the bag identifiable from distance, so long as the charm is in line of sight. It does not, remarkably, stop strangers from grabbing the wrong bag, but it does get funny if they insist they recognize their bag when you ask them "you tied sparkly pink ribbon to your bag?"
The NATO alphabet is an uncanny intersection of being highly memorable and having carefully engineered properties across several dimensions. Whoever designed it did a brilliant job.
It is sticky as hell and surprisingly useful. I do assume that people who know it are ex-military but that isn’t entirely reliable in the US. A lot of other people picked it up, in part because it is so easy to learn by osmosis.
> Whoever designed it did a brilliant job.
It was an iterative process. Various words have been replaced over time, as problems became obvious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
RobWords made a video about it a few weeks ago! https://youtu.be/UAT-eOzeY4M
Was really helpfull when making international phone call to services like IRS or sometime good providers. Trying to spell out my french name and long adress or some order number with my strong accent was such a pain until then ^^
I know it from amateur radio, emergency services, and maritime communications, it's "officially" the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, shorthanded by some as the NATO Alphabet.
Others may know it by virtue of being fans of, or simply exposed to the Bloodhound Gang.
( FWiW I'm neither in nor from middle North America )
Once upon a time I read the joking phrase "M as in Mancy" and now it is the only thing I can ever think of when trying to spell out the letter M.
Perhaps I have now infected one of you. I am sorry.
This was originated (or at least popularized) in an episode of Archer from season 1. It remains maybe my favorite 5 minutes of comedy ever out to screen. It's just so tight!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=dNYMQpcqscA
An anecdote: I easily remember short-ish (pins, phone numbers) number combinations, learn completely new alphabets of new languages easily enough, just like their words, but I struggle to learn the NATO alphabet: the words have no meaning and I don't perceive them as atomic enough like a letter or number is, so it mostly looks like a large amount of random noise to me, like having to learn pi to 100 digits.
I forced myself to learn the NATO alphabet recently by using some online flashcards. Nothing complex, just shows the letter and I have to recall the word, then click to see if I got it right. Didn't take very long to get it down, and I go through them every few days to verify recall.
On a side note, the NATO alphabet is quite normalised in the Netherlands - most telephone operators will default to it when providing you information and likewise there is an expectation on you to use it when providing spelling sensitive information such as emails.
Same in UK - I usually use it when giving my postcode to people.
Why not just put a name tag on your luggage?
While effective, a tag is not efficient. Namely it misses two properties: "quickly" and "at a distance".
I have a (knock-off) Moomin character as my tag: now it is again quickly recognisable at a distance.
I tend to visualize the position of the numbers on a phone's keypad. The sequence is then the travel to touch them in order. For some reason, I find easier to memorize that shape than the single digits.
That’s so cool! I do this with colours - every number has a colour so I remember me imagining seeing the colour combination of a number. Like 438 is green, yellow, purple
I'd do that in reverse. More likely to remember 438 and so can use that to remember the colours!
That’s so cool! It’s funny how memory works, I’m very visual in my mind when I need to remember facts it’s usually through some kind of scene or memory castle-like setup. Sometimes, I can remember the page or place where something is written so I “read” it in my mind in order to reproduce the fact.
Personally, it's much easier for me to remember 246 (or any other number up to about 6 digits) than some mapping I pretend to care about.
I choose from a range of lockers that are years I was single. Who did I date that year?
I also set the combination to all zeroes, to scramble my combination after locking. Easier getting in and out with fixed muscle memory, and easy to confirm this is my locker. No one else does this.
Related: the mnemonic major system. Similar thing with consonants [1], somewhat time tested.
But probably not for aphantasts, at least I struggled. Much more with memory palaces.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system
I find myself rhyming the number in my head in a specific way that’s a little goofy but memorable. Just image how radio announcers say phone numbers and you have an idea.
More remembering the rhythm than the digits.
about 30 years ago I read the same thing, but I found that code much easier because it rhymed with the numbers:
1, bone; 2, shoe; 3, tree; 4, door; 5, hive; 6, sticks; 7, heaven; 8, gate; 9, line; 0, hero.
And any rhyme would do so you can make it make more sense.
123 -> bone shoe tree
But also Run blue bee (imagine a blue bee running with legs!)
I like this a lot better because you don’t have to visualize the way a number looks to remember the association, you say the word in your mind and just mentally say the number that rhymes. Seems faster to get the hang of
I do very similar, but one = bun, 9 = wine.
how can you rhyme 1 with bone?
Might just start saying bone like one and one like bone.
I listened to the audiobook version of Dominic O'Brien's Quantum Memory Power years ago. He explains this system, along with several others, like memory palaces. The mnemonics he uses for numbering are:
1: candle, 2: swan, 3: handcuffs, 4: sailboat, 5: curtain hook, 6: elephant’s trunk, 7: boomerang, 8: snowman, 9: balloon and string, 10: stick and hoop
Combining it with the journey method helps remember longer sequences. The funny thing is that you might remember the number two by imagining a giant swan in the next room. When you don't need to remember it anymore, you imagine yourself throwing a grenade into the room and blowing up the swan. It really works!
Darren Brown's Tricks of the Mind is generally about his life history in becoming a mentalist, but it has a lot of fun tidbits about methods to get over traumatic memories, amp yourself up for things you don't want you to, defuse arguments/fights, and it was the first place I ever heard of memory palaces.
I just write em down. This trick works amazingly well.
i'd say take a quick snap with your phone, although that's not ideal in a locker room.
i have a better way, try to remember a number instead of story, way easier
[stub for offtopicness]
(ok everyone, we took the naked man out of the title, let's talk about something more interesting now)