

Top 10 Memory Hacks  - antiform
http://lifehacker.com/384954/top-10-memory-hacks

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pchivers
If anyone is interested in spaced repetition software (SRS) like SuperMemo,
there are two open source projects that are very similar:

-Mnemosyne (<http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/>)

-Anki (<http://www.ichi2.net/anki/>)

I've been using Mnemosyne for a week now, ever since the article in Wired
about SRS (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=170542>). I've found Mnemosyne
to be easy to use and very effective at helping to memorize things. I use it
primarily for language learning (Spanish), but I've also used it for learning
the syntax of programming commands, dates of important historical events, and
identifying the countries in Europe and Africa on a map.

~~~
jrockway
Anki is awesome. I heard about it a week or so ago here, and have gotten
though the JLPT 2 words (1300 of 'em) with 90% retention in about a week. I
really wish I used flashcards when I was living in Japan, instead of my lazy-
ass "i'll learn it from hearing other people" technique. (That worked, but not
nearly as well as Anki.)

Now I just need to find a JLPT 1 word list :)

~~~
whacked_new
You might find this page helpful: <http://www.manythings.org/japanese/jlpt/>

It contains a list cross matched with EDICT

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baha_man
Derren Brown's book, 'Tricks of the Mind', has an interesting section on
memory:

[http://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Mind-Derren-
Brown/dp/1905026358...](http://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Mind-Derren-
Brown/dp/1905026358/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209577003&sr=8-1)

He discusses the 'loci system', 'memory palaces', and 'peg system':

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_peg_system>

I haven't tried them out myself yet.

~~~
whacked_new
It takes a lot of practice to really get the hang of these systems. Is anybody
here a regular user of any systematic memory technique?

I know the Major Method but only used it once or twice. The encoding step is
by far the largest bottleneck; I intend to write an application to assist
learning the MM, but I'm occupied with another related application atm :-)

Here's a very simple method I use to make sure I leave the house with
everything I need: I have a special number (say, 4), and when I go out my
belongings need to add up to that. That would be keys, wallet, camera, phone.
If I have other things I adjust my number accordingly. Maybe it's overly
simple, but I'm pretty sure some people forget their phones once in a while.

~~~
jsrn
for the Major Method, there is an application helping with the encoding step:

<http://www.phoneticmnemonic.com/>

(it works quite good, but only on short numbers up to 3 digits, so you have to
split longer numbers 'manually', which isn't so bad IMO). It's also available
as a FF extension (didn't test it myself).

------
palish
Shameless plug. I just finished writing a game that supposedly will improve
your short-term memory: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177991>

It's based on that paper about fluid intelligence:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176264>

