Remembering Things

Recently I was prompted to memorise my debit card number because the particular app that I was using required me to insert it every time I wanted to top up my transport card. This requirement is probably a good thing but it was frustrating to have to retrieve my debit card while out in public, getting my transport card ready for scanning and entering data into my mobile phone.

Getting that debit card number stored in my head would be a big help and so I resolved to do so. The bank's card contains sixteen digits divided into four blocks of four thus:

XXXX - XXXX - XXXX - XXXX

However I didn't find this helpful and ended up grouping them as follows:

XXX - XXX - XXX - XXXX - X - XX

I did this because it helped me to see a pattern in the numbers. To illustrate what I mean, let's generate a random sixteen, bank-type digit number and see what patterns we can see:

7900 - 7950 - 0133 - 9508

An immediate grouping of 790079 is obvious. So we have:

790079 - 50 - 0133 - 9508

A second grouping of 5001 suggests itself because of the similarity of the middle two zero digits in both groups. So now we have:

790079 - 5001 - 33 - 9508

The fact that 3 times 3 equals 9 prompts the next group of 339 so that now we have:

790079 - 5001 - 339 - 508

Remembering to begin with 79 is aided by the fact that 7 + 9 = 16 are there are sixteen digits in the number. The arithmetic digital root of the first block (790079) is 5 so this helps in setting up the first digit of the second block. There are only four digits in the second block and 5 - 4 = 1 which helps in remembering the last digit in the second block. We know that there is a middle 00 in both block. There are only three digits in the third block so that helps in remembering the first digit of the second block. The fourth and final block stands on its own but it is similar to the second block in that both begin with 5 and between the first and last digits there are only zeroes.

That's the way I'd remember that number. Let's try another randomly generated number.

4579 - 4661 - 9790 - 0734

Let's look at the 4 more closely. It can be viewed as 4 = 1 x 2 x 2 and if we add 1 to the 4 we get 5, then add 2 to the 5 to get 7 and 2 to the 7 to get 9, we end up with our first block of 4579. The second block begins with a four as did the first but is followed by six and not a four. However, 45 and 46 are consecutive numbers and we look at 46 reversed (64), we see that 61 is the nearest prime to 64. The next block begins with 97 which is the reverse of the last two digits of the first block (79). If we just include the 9 again, we have an easy to remember palindrome. Thus we have:

4579 - 4661 - 979 - 0 - 0734

I think the 007 would be obvious to everybody that gives us:

4579 - 4661 - 979 - 007 - 34

The remaining 34 connects to the previous 7 because 3 + 4 = 7. The number ends with a four and also starts with a four. That would be my approach but it may be for everybody because not everybody has made a study of numbers like I have and so the connections that I describe would not come easily. Another memory approach is the pinfruit method that I describe in a post titled Remembering PIN Numbers and also Time to Remember. See Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Using this method, a sixteen digit number will involve eight images. Thus 7900795001339508 is broken into the doublets 79 - 00 - 79 - 50 - 01 - 33 - 95 - 08 and becomes cup - oasis - cup - heels - suit - mammoth - pillow - sofa. One can form some sort of image from this such as "I dipped my CUP into the OASIS and filled the CUP. I still had my high HEELS and SUIT on and had a MAMMOTH drink after which I put my head on the PILLOW and fell asleep on the SOFA. Here the words cup, oasis, cup, heels, suit, mammoth, pillow and sofa each encode two digits of the sixteen digit word.

It's a matter of choice. I think for digits in excess of twenty that this might be a more robust method and certainly the only choice of very large numbers of digits.

Time to Remember

I've was analysing Iron and Wine's song Walking Far From Home in a post on my Mystical Meanderings blog. I like the song a lot but its lengthy lyrics are difficult to remember even though the guitar chord accompaniment is quite simple. This is a problem that I have with a lot of songs that I like to play on guitar: I know the chords but only parts of the lyrics. How to remember all the lyrics?

I've written about memorisation before in blog posts titled Remembering PIN Numbers on April 19th 2016. However, I've written more in a notebook on OneNote and I'll reproduce some of it here. For remembering numbers, the pinfruit system is popular. See Figure 1.

Figure 1

An extension of this idea involves grouping numbers into pairs from 00 to 99. See Figure 2 that I've copied from a Google Sheet.

Figure 2

An an example, my current telephone number is 081384755018 which can be broken up into the following pairs 08-13-84-75-50-18 which converts to sofa-thumb-fairy-shell-lace-tofu. This sequence of nouns needs to combined together into a meaningful image in which the elements are sequential. This only works once the table in Figure 1 has been thoroughly memorised.

When trying to remember the lyrics of a song however, another approach is needed. The images that arise from the lyrics need to be arranged sequentially in a sort of memory lane approach. I imagine myself strolling down a lane and the images that I encounter are one by one converted into the lyrics of the song. Below are the song lyrics that I've divided into quatrains because every four lines are more or less self-contained. There are twelve quatrains. The first and the last start with the lines:

I was walking far from home

Where the names were not burned along the wall

There are thus 12 x 4 + 1 = 49 lines with the last quatrain containing an additional line, namely "From the Lord". Quatrains 3 and 5 also begin with the line "I was walking far from home". There are also rhymes in lines 2 and 4 that also make memorisation easier. I've marked these in blue.

Walking Far From Home

Iron & Wine 

 

1 ************************** 

I was walking far from home

Where the names were not burned along the wall

Saw a building high as heaven

But the door was so small, door was so small 

 

2 **************************

I saw rainclouds, little babies

And a bridge that had tumbled to the ground

I saw sinners making music

And I dreamt of that sound, dreamt of that sound 

 

3 ************************** 

I was walking far from home

But I carried your letters all the while

I saw lovers in a window

Whisper, "Warn me like time, warn me like time"

4 ************************** 

I saw sickness blooming fruit trees

I saw blood and a bit of it was mine

I saw children in a river

But their lips were still dry, lips were still dry

 

5 ************************** 

I was walking far from home

And I found your face mingled in the crowd

Saw a boat full of believers

Sail off talking too loud, talking too loud

 

6 ************************** 

I saw sunlight on the water

Saw a bird fall like a hammer from the sky

And a woman on a speed train

She was closing her eyes, closing her eyes

7 ************************** 

I saw flowers on a hillside

And a millionaire pissing on the lawn

Saw a prisoner take a pistol

And say, "Join me in song, join me in song"

8 ************************** 

Saw a car crash in the country

Where the prayers are like weeds along the road

I saw strangers stealing kisses

Giving only their clothes, only their clothes

9 ************************** 

Saw a white dog chase its tail

And a pair of hearts carved into a stone

I saw kindness and an angel

Crying, "Take me back home, take me back home"

10 ************************** 

Saw a highway, saw an ocean

I saw widows in the temple to the Lord

Naked dancers in the city

How they spoke for us all, spoke for us all

 

11 ************************** 

I saw loaded linen tables

And a motherless colt and it was gone

I saw hungry brothers waiting

With a radio on, radio on

12 ************************** 

I was walking far from home

Where the names are not burned along the wall

Saw a wet road form a circle

And it came like a call, came like a call

From the Lord

 

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Samuel Ervin Beam

Walking Far From Home lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Remembering PIN Numbers

Here is what's recommended by some banks as an aid to remembering a PIN number. Let's say your PIN is 1537. Make a grid of letters as shown below and decide on a word with the same number of letters as the PIN. For example, choose SHOP and then be careful to assign the number 1 to S, 5 to H, 3 to O and 7 to P. Thereafter, assign random numbers to the remaining letters.

All that is needed to retrieve the PIN then is to refer to the card. Of course, the relevant letters and numbers are not marked in red as they are here and so if the card falls into the wrong hands, it's not of any use.

An alternative is the PINFRUIT method in which letters, specifically consonants, are assigned to the numerals 0 to 9.

In this case, 1537 could be encoded as the words dolly mug with the associated image as shown below:

The image of Dolly Parton on a mug should be sufficient to recall the PIN number once the phrase dolly mug is retrieved. Of course, the PINFRUIT system takes a little getting used to but once mastered, it is easy to apply to any set of numbers that one encounters.

One can take this a step further and assign images to all number pairs between 00 and 99. In this system, the number pairs have preassigned words as shown below:

In this system, 1537 would correspond to towel hammock and so an image of a towel resting on a hammock should be sufficient to retrieve the PIN. 

If one intends to use the PINFRUIT system on a long term basis, then it's probably better to follow the latter system so that words don't have to be made up on the fly. A memory palace can then be populated with the images of words drawn from the 00 to 99 grid and applied to any number of numerals. 

For example, suppose one needs to remember the number 9948621987363. Firstly, divide the number into pairs moving right to left. The result is:

09 94 86 21 98 73 63

It is vital for numbers with an odd number of digits that the pairing process proceeds from right to left so that a leading zero can be applied. Referring to the 00-99 grid, the following words are generated from these number pairs:

soup - eyebrow - fish - hand - buff - comb - jam

A story or synthesised image can be then be generated for this sequence of words. For example, the following synthesised image works from the inside out:

It doesn't matter how odd the image is that is generated. In fact, the odder it is, the easier it will be to remember it.