Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0355: How to memorize excel formulas

Episode Date: July 17, 2015

Jay McKey asks about memorizing excel formulas. I show how he can apply mnemonics to some of the most important excel formulas. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 355. Heh. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Jay submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Jay says, I'm trying to increase my skill set by learning better how to use Excel. What do you suggest to memorize the formulas?

So Jay, for complex Excel formulas, I would suggest using a memory palace technique that I'm going to give you for organizing the palaces in such a way that you always know which fields you're using inside the formula. So I'll explain what this means. There are certain formulas that are very simple. You don't really have to think about them very much. For example, the sum formula. It's pretty straightforward.

You put sum, and then the parentheses, you simply put the things that you're adding up. It might be two items, or it might be a whole selection of items. In this case, the input is the only thing that's inside the parentheses and it returns a value that's pretty simple. So the return, what ends up displaying in the cell, is simply those things added up. In other formulas, it's a little more complicated because you have to think about a couple different things, both the input and the output. For example, the if formula. You have a logical statement, which is the input, and then you have two returns. The return if the statement is true, and the return if the statement is false.

What I would suggest is mnemonically categorizing your formulas so that whenever you use a formula, you immediately know or have a very easy way of remembering how many inputs there are, how many outputs there are, and generally speaking, just how many different qualities, how many different parameters you have to input when you're writing that formula. So for example, the VLOOKUP formula. We might simply place this formula into a palace room that indicates that there are four inputs and the output is already determined by what it uses. So there's the lookup value, and then there's the table array,

and then the column index number, and then the range lookup, which is optional. It seems to me that if you're wanting to use this formula at any particular moment, and you can remember that it's in a room, you've stored this particular formula mnemonically in a room where all the formulas have four inputs, then you'll more easily remember to put in four inputs. You could even organize your palace even further to show that three of the arguments are mandatory, but one of them is optional. So you could have a whole building of formulas that have four arguments and in one of the rooms three of the arguments are mandatory and one of them is optional. As far as how you would actually store this particular formula, the

VLOOKUP formula, you might imagine that someone is looking for something in particular in a closet, let's say, The place that you've stored all of these particular formulas from this category are in a bedroom and you put this one in a closet. The thing that's being looked up is a v-shaped sock and that then falls down onto a stock mnemonic that you have for any argument that means that you're searching for a table array. So you for any argument that means that you're searching for a table array. So you have a range of cells that you're searching within. And maybe every time that that happens, you have, I don't know, something that looks like a range of cells. Maybe it's a grid

of some kind, a piece of graph paper, whatever is memorable to you to use for that in all of your formulas that are like this. So your SOC falls down onto this grid thing, and then maybe a mouse runs out from one of the columns in the grid thing to indicate that you have to choose the column number that's going to contain the return value. So with that story going from top to bottom, SOC, then graph paper, then the mouse running out of one of those columns, you've kind of indicated all three of the first arguments in this formula. And then, based on the fact that it's in the room where you have three arguments that are mandatory and then one optional argument, what's going to happen is you're going to remember that you do have an optional argument at the end that you could put in. You could represent this

somehow with a Boolean image of some kind, but that's up to you based on whether you really want to store that. You'll still remember that there is a fourth optional argument based on where your VLOOKUP mnemonic, this story of the sock, is located in your general formula's memory palace. I hope that at least gives you some ideas for getting started, Jay, and I'd love to hear back from you if you implement any of this and what my recommendations for taking it further. And for Jay and for all listeners, I would really appreciate an iTunes review if you've gotten any benefit from this show, and if you want it to reach more people, these reviews have a multiplying effect on whom iTunes allows to see the show. So it's not just the stars, it's also the review. You can rate it honestly and then

write something about it. And that's a potential for hundreds of more people to see the show. What do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Stay inspired and I'll talk to you again soon. © transcript Emily Beynon