Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0384: How to memorize figures and formulas with mnemonics

Episode Date: August 27, 2015

Phu asks about memorizing formulas, such as “w=1/2*k(l^2)”, using mnemonics. I present some ideas for creating a standardized process, plus I invite Phu to collaborate with me on creating a standard mnemonic process for such 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 […]

Master of Memory 384. 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. Fu submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Fu says, how can I remember facts and formulas like w equals half of k times l squared? So, Fu, I addressed something very similar specifically about mathematical formulae in episode four, and I'd like to talk a little bit more about ideas for creating a standardized process for this.

So what I would recommend is, first of all, we should come up with our PAO objects for the numbers. So we're going to use our PAO objects. So for example, for me, the number one is acid, the number two is a ball of snow, and so on. That's just based on the major system. And then for letter variables, perhaps you can have an animal that starts with each of those letters. For example, A is an aardvark, B is a bee, K is a kangaroo, L is a lion, and W is a walrus. Those last three are going to be relevant to the formula that we're looking at right now. And then, let's see, in episode four, I talked about the idea of using two hills on the two sides of the equation, although I think I'd like to do something that's a little more flexible so that we could store it in a variety of different types of memory palaces. If you had to store a

formula like this, well, first of all, if you had to have a bunch of these, you'd have to have a bunch of pairs of two hills, and that's a whole lot. I'd rather store them in a memory palace and be able to store them really anywhere. So what we might do is maybe have something more generally fighting against the other, not necessarily one hill against the other hill, but, you know, two sides of whatever scene is at hand. Let's say there's a table and you could have the people that are fighting on one side on top of the table and the people that are fighting on the other side, you know, beside the table. And then you have the chair. Maybe some people are on one side and some people are on the other. And maybe you have two walls that are close to each other in a closet,

and you have one team on one wall and the other team on the other wall. But what we're describing here is our images that we're creating on either side of the equation are going to be on opposite sides of these walls or whatever it is that we're doing just generally you're going to put them opposed to each other so that you can remember how they go and remember that one is on one side and everything else is on the other side as far as some of the other stuff goes you know division is one thing is on top of the other directly on top of the other so we have this big expression that's divided by two so we'll have everything else on top of the other, directly on top of the other. So we have this big expression that's divided by 2, so we'll have everything else on top of the snowball in some way, or directly above the snowball in some way. That's pretty easy.

Exponents are a little hard. I will probably, as far as squaring that L goes, we just use two lines, so L L. We have two L's next to each other instead of L squared, although something more advanced would have to be produced for exponents that involve fractions and things like that. And then let's see, let's go ahead and finish this example. So we'll put it all together. Let's say that we have the W on one side, W equals half of K times L squared. So we have the W on one side, and he's fighting against everybody else. So let's say that our scenario is just a table against a wall. So the walrus is on the floor next to the table and everyone else is on the table sort of above him. Now the ball of snow is dangling under the table because they're wanting to drop the ball of snow on him. So that represents that everything on top of the table is

divided by two. So we have W against a bunch table is divided by two so we have w against a bunch of stuff divided by two now what is that stuff that's divided by two well a kangaroo and two lions they're just all against each other maybe the kangaroo is on top of one lion and the other lion is grabbing onto the kangaroo's tail just to make this really kind of memorable and you can easily remember that there are two lions rather than just one lion or three lions so we have kangaroo on top of a lion and then there's another lion grabbing onto the kangaroo's tail now that's really easy to remember so we have k times l times l divided by two opposed to the walrus so equals w that's really easy now foo this is something that i'd really like to work on, actually,

as far as creating standard mnemonics for mathematical formulas, because this is something that I think a lot of people would find very handy, and we could just put out standard materials for people to memorize very easily, a bunch of important formulas, not just the quadratic formula, but a bunch of other things that would be helpful for algebra and beyond. For everyone listening, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.