Remembering numbers

A few years ago, I became painfully aware of what a bad memory I had. People would tell me things, and I would forget them just a few minutes later. I would forget whom I had told what and friends would invariably end up in situations where they had to tell me “Yeah, you told me that yesterday”. Annoyed at my own failings, I decided to try to learn what I could about memory; how it works, how to improve it and how to get into the habit of remembering things.

What is memory?
Memory works through a series of associations. If something is entirely unassociated in our mind, we will forget it. The more associations we establish to a thing, the easier it will be to remember it. We can think of our mind as a continent with many cities, villages and towns placed here and there. Every single city, village or town is an individual memory, and the roads between them are the chains of association. If we’re going from place A to G, we usually have to pass through B, C, D, E, and F to get there. Similarly, if I want to remember the name of my English teacher in fourth grade, I have to go through the associations to get there. First I remember myself at that time, then what the classroom looked like, then where the teacher was standing, then what she looked like, and then the name comes to me.

Usually when we’re having trouble remembering something, it’s because we’re not going through the chain of associations but trying to jump directly to the end point.

Tips and tricks
One of the things that many people have the most trouble remembering is numbers; mainly because it’s difficult to associate things to them. To properly remember, for example, a telephone number, many people start associating the number with the pattern that it makes on the keypad or breaking it up into parts that can be associated with something. “Let’s see, 258 is just a straight line down the keypad, then 23 is like that Jim Carrey Movie, and then 46 is twice that…”

While studying memory techniques; a field of study called mnemonics, I found a system called “the Major System” to help people remember numbers. In essence, it teaches us to create letter associations to every number and then using those letters to create a word, phrase or sentence. This word, phrase or sentence is usually much easier to remember than an arbitrary number that we have no association with. The Major System comes in many flavors, and the version that I’m most familiar with is this one:

0 – The letters s or z, like in “zero”
1 – The letter l, because that’s what it looks like
2 – The letter n, because n touches the ground in two places
3 – The letter m, because m touches the ground in three places
4 – The letter r, because of the sound “four”
5 – The letter f or v, because of the sound “five”
6 – The letters b or p, because both plosives look like the number 6
7 – The letters t or d, because the letter t looks like the number 7
8 – The throaty sounds ch, gh or the letter j.
9 – The letters g or k, because 9 looks like the letter g.

Note that all words are consonants, the letter h is not in there, and that the places where two different letters represent the same number always look or sound similar to each other. Using these associations, which have to be learned by rote but include associations already in them, we can begin creating words out of numbers.

Examples
Say one of my friends has ended up in the hospital and he calls me to let me know what room he’s in because I want to go and visit him. “I’m in room 5243″ he tells me. I tell him I’ll be there in a bit, and then hang up. I haven’t written the number down, because my mind is going through this routine automatically by now:

5243, that’s f n r m or v n r m. That gives us fu-nu-ru-mu, funny roomie, funny aroma, fanny aroma, fan rum, fun room… Yeah, fun room! My friend’s room is the hospital’s most fun room!

I then go through this chain of associations in my mind for a few seconds; picturing my friend in the hospital bed having the best time of his life. There are clowns and jesters entertaining him, jugglers and musicians everywhere, and he’s got two beautiful women lying next to him to keep him company as he recouperates. Yeah, that’s definately a fun room! I find that exaggerated, humorous or even disgusting images are the easisest to remember. I’d rather remember my friend being in a funny room or a room filled with “fanny aroma” rather than trying to remember that he’s in a phone room.

Note that the letters we’re using aren’t letters as such, but rather the sounds related to the letters. Even though the word “bomb” is spelled with three consonants, most accents pronounce it “bom”. The number 63 would become “bomb”, even though the literal spelling would make it “636″. Similarly, the word “knowledge” starts with the sound for the number 2, not the number 9.

Once I get to the hospital, all I need to do is think about my friend again, and my mind brings up the picture of him in the room with the jesters and clowns, my mind says “fun room”, which I then translate back to numbers.

Let’s see, fun room, that fu-nu-ru-mu, or f n r m, which is 5 2 4 3. He’s in room 5243!

Usage
This sort of thing can be done with numbers of any length, everything ranging from 2 (hen) to 64524341 (bar vine, room rally). Other systems can be used around it, for example using famous people’s initials to represent pairs of numbers. Let’s say we’re interested in learning when East Germany joined NATO; the year 1955. First we break the number up into two pairs, 19 and 55. The 19 is LK or LG, which is obviously Larry King. The 55 is FF or VV. I get Vince Vaughn. All we need to do is imagine that Larry King is interviewing Vince Vaughn.

When using pairs of names like this, generally it’s best to imagine that the first person is doing something to the second person so that we have the order clear in our minds. When using dates like this, it’s usually not a problem as 5519 doesn’t make sense in the context. If you’re trying to remember the PIN to your new debit card however, this can make a difference. Say the pin is 3792 (Matt Damon, Keira Knightley). So that we don’t remember it in the wrong order, imagine Matt Damon doing something to Keira Knightley, and let your own imagination take care of exactly what that is. Just make sure it’s unambiguous.

Another example of this would be when Mauritius was colonized by the Netherlands, the year 1638. First, I break the number down into two pieces; 16 and 38. 16 is LB or LP, which brings Al Pachino to mind for me. The second number, 38 is MJ, which gives me Michael Jackson. So, I imagine that Al Pachino is beating the living daylights out of Michael Jackson. Since we’re talking about Mauritius and the colonization from the Netherlands, I imagine that they’re standing on a perfectly idyllic white beach and that they’re both for some obscure reason – wearing large wooden clogs as they do this.

Many combinations can be made by using celebrities in this way. 1834 becomes Elton John and Meg Ryan. 1061 becomes Luke Skywalker and Bruce Lee. Make up your own numbers starting from 00 (Susan Sarandon) to 99 (Kurt Cobain) so that you can represent any year without problems.

One important thing to note is that the words you generate should always be nouns, so that sentences that you create will not suffer by your wondering if you’re translating all words or just some words. The number 047790, or SRTTGS/SRDDGS can be read as “sword dogs“. If we can’t figure out a good phrase using that word, we could use the sentence “This sword used to belong to dogs” or – shame on you! – “This sword is used to kill dogs”. As the only nouns in the sentence are sword and dogs, it becomes easy to figure out which letters to use.

Summing up
The Major System is only used for numbers; but the way it works gives us a great view into how other memory systems could work and allows us to try to create our own. I’d recommend that you, if you want to learn the Major System, try it out on everything you see for a week or two. If you see a street sigh with a speed limit, translate the speed limit to the corresponding letters and make a word out of it. If you go to your boss and knock on his door, translate the room number to a word or words. If you’re getting on a bus, translate the bus number to a word or words. Play around with the system and you’ll quickly see how you become quicker and more proficient in finding words that fit.

Here’s a challenge; figure out a good way of remembering the number 6289412! (Hint: pronounce the letters in your head, bu-nu-ju-gu-ru-lu-nu, alternating vowel sounds to get bi-na-jo-ge-ro-li-na and so on until you start hearing words)