
Harry Potter and the Mnemonic Major System - krisfris
https://darkshadow.io/2020/07/09/harry-potter-and-the-mnemonic-major-system.html
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cjhveal
I found it pretty curious that the voiced dental fricative was used to
represent 1 but the unvoiced dental fricative was used to represent 8, seems
like the only voiced/unvoiced pair to be split in this way.

In my idiolect, they both belong together with the alveolar plosive pair
(/t/,/d/) in category 1. The place of articulation feels almost identical
between my laminal plosives and dental fricatives.

Though I do agree with grouping the velar nasal along with the alveolar nasal
rather than with the other velar plosives. The acoustic similarity between /n/
and /N/ feels a lot more salient than any similarity in velar articulation.

Overall, a really cool system! Now I'm curious about what kind of density you
could reasonably encode if you remove the need to memorize and used it as a
form of steganography.

~~~
krisfris
You're right that the voiced and unvoiced pair ð and θ probably belong
together, as is the case with other voiced and unvoiced pairs. This would also
significantly reduce the disambiguities that need to be manually resolved in
Step 3. I chose to put θ into category 8 though because intuitively it sounds
more like f than t to me, possibly because I'm not a native speaker. I might
change my mind about it if it turns out to be more practical to have them both
in category 1.

I like your idea of using the major system as a form of steganography. It
would require a deterministic encoding algorithm though. I might explore this
idea in another post in the future.

~~~
cjhveal
I think these are cases where it's going to depend on what is most natural for
each individual, especially when used for mnemonic purposes. Whether the
acoustic or articulatory similarities feel more salient is going to depend
entirely on your own mental model of the language. It's common to see the
unvoiced dental fricative realized as /f/, even in native english dialects, so
if that is more natural for you to remember, there's value in that.

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schoen
It might or might not be easier for people to start by reading the Wikipedia
page about this system that maps digits to sounds (which has a huge history
and fanbase):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system)

The linked article is an introduction to the system and the author has
included some Python tools to help you learn and use it.

~~~
pests
Slightly off topic and I get your point but I cracked up at myself when I read
"maps digits to sounds" and my first thought was "oh like words like seven"

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throw1234651234
Mnemonics are vastly overrated and the tricks you see with people using them
are mainly a result of constant practice which could be achieved by other
means.

"Gruneberg (1998) argues that the keyword method, in general, is inferior to
rote learning in the longer-term retention of vocabulary."

[https://universeofmemory.com/effectiveness-and-usefulness-
of...](https://universeofmemory.com/effectiveness-and-usefulness-of-
mnemonics/)

~~~
krisfris
Interesting article! I agree that mnemonics don't help you much with long-term
retention, that's why it makes sense to combine it with a spaced-repetition
strategy such as rote learning. However, mnemonics help you translate
information into a form that's easier to process for the brain. Even if you
don't actively use mnemonic techniques when memorizing meaningless
information, you will likely end up applying such techniques intuitively.

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dmi
Interesting; I learned a slightly different set of associations with mnemonics
for the sounds as well. 0, 2, and 3 were the same as this system:

    
    
      0 = the word zero has an s/z sound
      1 = a single line, like lower-case "L"
      2 = two lines, like lower-case "N"
      3 = three lines, like lower-case "M"
      4 = the word "four" ends in an "R" sound
      5 = the word "five" contains "F" and "V"
      6 = the digit looks like a lower-case "B", and lower-case "D" is its mirror image
      7 = the digit looks like a badly-written upper-case "T"
      8 = the "gh" in the word is weird, and reminiscent of "CH"/"SH" (and "J" is similar)
      9 = the digit looks like a lower-case "G", which is similar to lower-case "Q", and lower-case "P" is its mirror image
    

I had no idea that there was a standard, but I use it a lot to remember what
page I've reached in a book (without a bookmark handy), or for short strings
of numbers like IP addresses. I find it much easier to remember "Latin insults
suns lamely" than "172.217.20.131", though I'd probably try and find a better
mnemonic than "insults" for 217, as that technically maps to 20170...

It's kind of like the "correct horse battery staple" thing
([https://xkcd.com/936/);](https://xkcd.com/936/\);) words are easier to
memorise, especially if you can create a narrative, however tiny.

~~~
krisfris
I would like to know the history of how the standard came about actually as it
seems fairly arbitrary.

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eihli
This is great. I started hacking on something very similar
([https://ezmonic.com](https://ezmonic.com)) but you took it all the way with
NLTK and finding noun phrases. Another great addition would be to find rhyming
phrases if it's possible given a number. Maybe add some rules to the Mnemonic
system so that certain parts of speech are ignored, so you can throw extra
syllables in when needed by adding some adjectives or adverbs. I'm curious if
the flexibility to create rhythmic rhymes would aid in memorization, or if the
added phonemes would cancel out the benefit.

~~~
krisfris
Great idea about finding or even generating rhyming phrases! If you clearly
define the parts of speech used for encoding (probably nouns), I don't think
it would cancel out the benefit.

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xondono
Maybe it's just me, but reflecting on old memories has shown me how unreliable
the human memory is, so nowadays I just try to rely as little as possible in
my own memory.

I also find it takes a "computational" toll on my thinking ability. As far as
I'm concerned, my mind pretty much has only volatile storage, and anything
that should be kept for later needs to be written back to something more
durable.

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tasogare
The post is not uninteresting but I doubt it has any real life applicability.
Memorizing the number->consonants mapping (which is lossy) probably take
already more time and efforts than memorizing the few raw digit strings that
much be memorized in one’s life. It also assumes people would recall
accurately a phrase or sentence.

My personal technic for memorizing numbers like pin or phone numbers is to
memorize the general shape of the difference between each digit. It’s obvious
to compute, use visual memory and doesn’t not requires an external system.

~~~
Smaug123
I use Major for dates, and I know the periodic table as a mapping of number
<-> element <-> symbol. (And, by accident, I know my Oyster card's serial
number.) It also is handy if you want to carry a number around briefly without
writing it down - I've used it for carrying numbers from computer to computer
at work. With lots more practice I could probably get near-real-time
memorisation, and the possibilities would expand much more.

