Memorizing a Hundred Digit Number

In my previous post, I explained how permanently associating an absurd scene with each of the fifty-two playing cards and defining a fixed path through one’s own home is enough to equip just about anyone to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards. This post extends that conceptual equipment so that the framework may also be used to memorize long, randomly generated strings of numbers.

The previous post explains two techniques, Person-Action-Object-Environment (PAOE) and Method of Loci (MoL), but it mentions Mnemonic Major only briefly. Here’s a more robust explanation of that technique.

Mnemonic Major explained

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Mnemonic Major (MM) is a mapping of consonantal sounds to numbers. For example, the sound made by M corresponds to 3, and the sound made by K (or hard C or hard G) corresponds to 7.

Note that ‘M’ touches the baseline three times. Although it’s not strictly required that the mappings from sound to number carry a visual association between a letter and a digit, it’s convenient when they happen to do so. Accordingly, it’s nice that ‘N’ touches the baseline twice and corresponds to 2. It’s fine that cursive, lowercase “f” happens to look like 8, and a lively imagination can see a capital ‘L’ within the shape of 5. Some mnemonic enthusiasts have worked out exceedingly clever re-mappings of consonants onto all the digits based on visual traits such as these, and some people prefer those revisions to the traditional MM, but the latter has one solid advantage: heritage.

MM goes back at least to the 1630s, and there’s a body of literature and usage that explores and expands its potential. (Per Wikipedia, systems of this sort, but with mappings appropriate to their respective languages, may be found in South Asia and elsewhere as early as the 7th century CE, so the heritage in view here is of comparatively recent European vintage). Rather than swim upstream with a novel, recently mapped, preciously superior method, I prefer to stick with good ol’ Mnemonic Major. It works for this, and maybe it’ll open other vistas, too. And, since I learned it long ago, it’s already baked in.

The MM system looks like this:

On this system, the consonantal values (if any) of W, H, and Y are nullities; I ignore them.

The basic mental move is to map the numbers you’d like to memorize into catchy words (or the words into numbers) based on this table and the sounds of the words. So, for example, 8675309 could be “fish clam soup”. (Vowels don’t matter, so we’re looking at f-sh-c-l-m-s-p there.)

In the other direction, sword would be 041 (matching the ’s’, ‘r’, and ’d’, with the ‘w’ not mattering) and sassy realty would be 00451.

That’s all we need to know about Mnemonic Major.

Extending the PAOE/MoL framework

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The Original Set of Tetrads Reorganized

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Here’s the table from the previous post, but this time it’s not presented in New Deck Order. I’ve changed the sequence and removed the cards. However, each Person-Action-Object-Environment tetrad is intact: if Sally Field was spinning a heli before a palmetto in the deck-of-cards table in the previous post, then Sally Field is still spinning that heli before that palmetto in this table.

Two-digit numbers replace the playing card abbreviations. The table now starts with 00, and in Mnemonic Major that’s ‘S’-‘S’, so we have Susan Sarandon conga-lining a jester around a Festivus pole as a fifty-third image. (If we cared to use this image in deck-memorization, this tetrad would be useful for the Joker, whether in color or black-and-white.)

Ordering the tetrads in this way reveals more about why these particular people were chosen. In the prior post, I said, “Each person has a two-word name, first and last, but has no middle name and no additional factors (such as a title or suffix). I’ll explain more about that in another post.” Now we can see that the first consonantal sound of the first name and the first consonantal sound of the last name match the corresponding two-digit number via Mnemonic Major.

So, for example, Leonard Nimoy matches 52, and Nikola Tesla maps onto 21. Leading vowel sounds don’t matter, so Anoushka Shankar is 26, while Maya Angelou is 32. Having added Susan Sarandon as 00, we have 53 entries.

Extending the Set of Tetrads

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Here’s a table showing PAOE tetrads for 53-99, for a total of 100 scenes:

Notes on Persons

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Here, as above, the name of the Person in each row has initial sounds that correspond, via MM, to the two-digit number of that row.

Notes on Actions

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The Action in each row is just a natural, surreal, or contrived transitive verb. Actions carry no hidden meaning, but I chose them with care to be distinct from one another, distinct from objects and environments, and useful in forming odd imagery.

Notes on Objects

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In the items carried forward from the previous post (namely, rows 01-52) the Object always had two consonant sounds, one for the suit of the corresponding playing card and one for the Mnemonic Major value of that card. But for rows 53-99, the deck of cards doesn’t matter. Instead, each object’s two consonantal sounds also map to the row number via MM. So, for example, Fred Astaire matches 80, and so does his vase. The same goes for Carrie Fisher and her guava, and for Paul McCartney and his I-beam.

To avoid ambiguity and support memory, the 13 objects in rows 01-52 must start with ‘c’ for “clubs”, while the objects in rows 70-79 must start with hard G. That way, a one- or two-syllable object starting with an MM-7 sound immediately discloses whether it matches a playing card or a number in the 70s.

Notes on Environments

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The deck-related items also have Environments that allude to the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. And Susan and her jester have a Festivus pole. But that leaves forty-seven rows in need of a setting. For these, I have chosen (in rough chronological order) famous statues or sculptures, mostly drawn from the western European tradition. These are vividly memorable to me because I studied art history and know them well; someone else using this technique might prefer to swap in a different set of environments that they find mentally vivid and available.

The technique in a nutshell

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• Prep work: PAOE: Permanently associate each two-digit number from 00-99 with a vivid, contrived scene in which a memorable person (such as a celebrity) performs some strange but visually distinct action on some direct object while standing in front of some tall or large background environment.
• Prep work: MoL: Imagine a trip through your own home or workplace (or some other well-known venue) that has thirteen waypoints. The important thing here is that the path of navigation must always be exactly the same and that the waypoints are unambiguous and unwavering. This permanent path makes that venue your Memory Palace.
• Prep work: MM (optional): Learn Mnemonic Major, and suddenly the Persons and Objects will declare their corresponding numbers without further processing.
• To Memorize a Sequence of 8 Digits: Divide the batch into four pairs. Imagine a scene using the Person from the first pair, the Action from the second pair, the Object from the third pair, and the Environment from the fourth pair. Mentally walk through your Memory Palace and place that unprecedented, bizarre, newly imagined scene at the first waypoint. The scene from the next batch of eight digits belongs at the next waypoint, and so forth until all thirteen waypoints are filled with images. Eight times twelve is ninety-six, so the thirteenth batch really needs only a Person and an Action, or a Person and an Environment, or a Person and an Object…. Another way to look at this is that the thirteenth batch actually reaches 104 digits.
• To Recall Those Digits in Order: Mentally navigate through the memory palace again. At the first waypoint, recall the bizarre scene that resides there, decode it into its four contributing two-digit numbers, and name them in PAOE order. Proceed to the next waypoint and do the same.

Working through an example

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Let’s randomly generate a long number:

• Digits: 37313541357682106695285215288671

The first step is to take eight from the front and break that block into pairs:

• Digits remaining: 357682106695285215288671 37-31-35-41

Then we take the Person from the first pair, the Action from the second, and so forth: Misty Copeland bubble-wrapping a hockey puck before a cabin.

We’ll place that image on my front porch, enter through the door into the foyer, and grab another eight:

• Digits remaining: 6695285215288671 37-31-35-41 (porch) 35-76-82-10 (foyer)

In the foyer, we discover Martin Landau unveiling a telephone before the UVA Rotunda. Hmmm. Maybe he’s confusing Mr. Jefferson with Mr. Bell.

Turning through the door, we enter the living room:

• Digits remaining: 15288671 37-31-35-41 (porch) 35-76-82-10 (foyer) 66-95-28-52 (living room)

Here, we discover Jackie Chan awarding a ham that rests atop a stack of indigo crates. The award is a blue ribbon that says “Some Pig!”

Crossing the living room, we round a dividing wall into the kitchen.

• Digits remaining: (none) 37-31-35-41 (porch) 35-76-82-10 (foyer) 66-95-28-52 (living room) 15-28-86-71 (kitchen)

Whom do we discover near the range? David Letterman plinthing a fuchsia before the Laocoön. I just wanted to refill my water bottle!

To recall all 32 digits, we’d just start again at the porch, recall the scene at each waypoint, decode it into its four pairs, and proceed until finished.

The odd edge case

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There’s no guarantee that the long number you’ll have to memorize will be even; sometimes, there remaions a single, dangling digit. What should be done about that lonely number? It doesn’t call for a PAOE scene; MM is enough. So I use the following table of cartoon characters. (And since cartoon characters are used here, they’re excluded from the Person set, and that’s why 33 isn’t Mickey Mouse.)

That’s how I prefer to memorize a long sequence of digits. The chart ranging from 00 through 99 is good enough to go beyond the 104 digits that fit into thirteen waypoints. Memorizing an even longer sequence is just a matter of including more waypoints in one’s Memory Palace. Indeed, some folks like to store a different Memory Palace at each waypoint of their Primary Memory Palace… but that’s a story for another post.