For almost everything in life, there seems to be a number. Examples range from bank codes and account numbers, PINs, and national insurance or tax numbers to telephone numbers, fax numbers, and postcodes. We also build our lives around numbers in the form of dates and deadlines for work appointments and social events. Although our brains are not naturally well equipped to deal with these strings of digits, here are ways to help your memory cope.
The Major System
The digit letter or major system was first used over 300 years ago. The underlying principle is that a corresponding consonant represents each number from 0 to 9. Using these consonants, numbers are translated into sounds, sounds into words, and words into images. Here are the consonants for each symbol, together with some simple devices for remembering them:
- 0: The letters s and z are the first sounds in zero.
- 1: The letters t and d have a single down-stroke.
- 2: The letter n has two down-strokes.
- 3: The letter m has three down-strokes.
- 4: The letter r is the last letter in ‘four.’
- 5: The letter l is the Roman numeral for 50.
- 6: The letter j is like a reversed 6.
- 7: The letter k can be made from two 7s.
- 8: The letter f can be written with two loops like 8.
- 9: The letter p is a mirror reversal of 9.
The next step is to make a memory image to go with each number you want to be able to remember. For example, to remember the number 10, you first need to think of a word starting with a t or d and ending with an s or z sound. Any vowel can be used to complete the word because vowels have no set meaning within the system. A word to represent 10 could be “doze.” The image of your partner dozing with “zzzz” above his or her head could be your mnemonic for the number 10.
The advantage of the major system is that you can use it to convert any string of numbers into a meaningful word or phrase.
Suppose that you want to remember your holiday is planned for the 14th to 25th of June. These numbers translate into “t-r-n-l,”
which could make the words “tour the Nile.” Alternatively, you can make up a phrase with the letters as initials. For example, “Take Really Nice Luggage.”
Remembering Historical Dates
You can use the major system to help you remember historical dates. Years are usually four digits in length-but for dates from the last millennium; you can take the 1 for granted and convert just three numbers into letters. For example, the Wright brothers made their first flight in 1903. This date becomes p-s-m, which you can remember with the phrase Powered Sky Machine.
Birth Dates
When filling in official forms, people are often caught out when they try to remember the year of a parent’s or child’s birth. A rhyme can help, Particularly if it has associations with the Person or event. For example:
In nineteen hundred and sixty-three,
Gemma was born in time for tea.
Nineteen hundred and twenty-five, The very first year my mum was alive.
See if You can make up some of Your own.
Keeping Dates in Your Memory
Keeping a diary is a sensible way to remember next week’s appointments, provided, of course, that you always remember to look at your diary.
However, a memory aid such as the method of loci combined with the ‘one is a bun’ peg system can be effective if you plan and use them consistently. Choose a room or place in your house for each day of the week, and then place the people you have to see on each day in the appropriate locations. Suppose you have to meet your sister at 10 on Monday morning and go to the dentist at 3.30 pm; meet a friend for tea on Wednesday, and go to the theatre at 7 pm on Friday.
First, imagine your sister sitting in your bedroom (Monday), clutching a huge hen (ten). Beside her, your dentist is pinned to the bed by the snapped-off half of a tree (half three). In the bathroom (Wednesday), your friend is sitting in the bath and pouring tea into cups on a tray. Entering the sitting room (Friday), you find a stage has been erected, and angels are staging a heavenly (seven) play.
Trying Out The Methods
Now, use one or more of the mnemonic techniques on this page to remember some real dates. In the list below, first, complete the details of the personal dates, then memorize the list. Test yourself the next day.
- Day and time next week when you are meeting a friend:
- Your mother’s year of birth:
- Your aunt’s/niece’s birthday:
- The page number of your place in the book you are reading:
- The postcode of someone you send a postcard to on holiday:
- The year of the Russian revolution: 1917
- Execution of Mary Queen of Scots: 1587
- The fall of Rome: 476
- End of World War II in Europe: 8 May 1945
- Year of first human-crewed space flight: 1961
Methods for remembering dates are helpful, but nothing works 100 percent of the time. All memory methods take practice and may fail; if you don’t give them, you fail attention. When you first try out these methods, keep a written list of your appointments, just in case.
