Memory and memorization

Terry

3.1415926535807932384626433

I used to be able to go to a hundred from memory. My son and daughter can do so.
Age 75 has cheated me a bit in this regard.

What sort of things have you memorized (whether useful or useless)?

I can recite the entire Rime of the Ancient Mariner to this day, btw.

There are many so-called tricks for remembering things that can be easily learned and I've
read all or most of those books.
The amusing thing about such memory is this: nobody cares!
"Why do you need to memorize when you can just use your iPhone?

Sigh...
I memorized the Periodic Table of Elements one day at work. I've never used that. :)
I memorized 825 Bible verses when I was a JW.
The more you do these sorts of things the stronger the impression sets into the cement.
If you do NOT use it - losses begin to occur. Hard drive space is conserved, I suppose.

I can recite Gilbert and Sullivan: I Am the very model of a Modern English Gentleman from
the Pirates of Penzance but people flee the room when I begin.

I can recite the alphabet backward in less than ten seconds.
Mind you - this has nothing to do with intelligence. Simply a capacity and skill.

I can do the Professor Harold Hill patter: TROUBLE from the Music Man and enjoy doing so
just as self-entertainment.

I love tongue twisters: THE SILENT SEA CEASETH AND THUS SUFFICETH US.
RUBBER BABY BUGGY BUMPER
BLACK BUG'S BLOOD
My favorite of all is the ANNOUNCER'S TEST which Jerry Lewis would do every year
on the March of Dimes telethon for M.S.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06D1F5-4Atc

One hen
Two ducks
Three squawking geese
Four limerick oysters
Five corpulent porpoises
Six pairs of Don Alversos tweezers
Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic, old men on roller skates with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth
Ten lyrical, spherical diabolical denizens of the deep who hall stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery, all at the same time.
I added a few of my own:
Eleven silent, silver, Soviet submarines, stealthily surveying some sunken city near San Salvador.

joey jojo

"Dont memorise anything you can look up." - Albert Einstein

dropoffyourkeylee

In my teens I read The Memory Book, by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas. I spent a lot of time working on it and got to where I could amaze the school teachers by memorizing population of states, and pointless stuff like that. I found it to be a LOT of work and mental energy. Ultimately not really necessary. However, to this day I still use the technique of assigning letters to numbers, converting the number to a word, and remembering the number as a word. It helps in recalling an address, SS number, things like that.

Ding

The Memory Book is great!

I use the phonetic alphabet all the time.

Terry

The LETTERS as NUMBERS and vice verse comes from Dr. Bruno Furst published as YOU CAN REMEMBER.
All subsequent books and courses more or less (cough cough) "borrow" his techniques.
The following podcast is very informative and historically thrilling.
https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/bruno-furst/

Nephilim87

When I was in grade 7 we did a lesson on public speaking. It could be a story or poem or experience but it was to be said in front of the auditorium in front of the class.

My mom had a lot of old books on Irish poems. I randomly picked one out. I sat with her and started reciting it. Within the first 10 minutes I was memorizing it. She told me that it would stay with me for life. 40 years later she was right.

15 years ago during some adversity in my life I memorized Psalm 119. In the contemporary English version Bible. 176 verses. Did 8 verses in the morning and 8 at night. Felt good.

Terry

Memorization of poems, math formulae, stories, vocabulary words, and all the above have certainly
proved useful to me throughout my life.
However - memorizing my public talks only limited me and it was pointed out to me by a friend of mine
that I was more effective when spontaneous. So, I stopped and began relying on key topics and transitions and it was like a whole new world of personal fulfillment. Spontaneity comes across so much better.
I tried this approach when I was cast in a play and it worked very well for me.

All the above said to make at least one point: Public schools seem to have abandoned required memory work and I think this cheats students for years to come.

Mum

I can recite MacBeth's soliloquy word for word, a French poem called "Clair de Lune," as well as the Pythagorean theorem, several Bible scriptures, the pledge of allegiance, and some other things.

I find very little to no use for them.

Riley

Has anyone ever noticed that the meetings are literally designed to not remember anything that was talked about.

I read somewhere that humans only really learn in a class setting for about 45-60 minutes at time and usually the only things that are really remembered are the first and last five minutes. JW meetings are too long and too disorganized to really have any real academic value. I can't even begin to describe how pointless an assembly is.

I really believe they design the meeting structure to do that.

Riley

As someone who plays guitar and rather poorly, I have no idea how some of these heavy acts can remember there solos and licks. It is crazy to me, especially when the singer gets a teleprompter.

Memory and memorization

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