Remembering, as an Extreme Sport – NYTimes.com
Monday, November 10th, 2014Remembering, as an Extreme Sport http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/remembering-as-an-extreme-sport Pharma sponsored competition emphasizes use of "memory palaces" for organizing facts
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The technique the competitors use is no mystery.
People have been performing feats of memory for ages, scrolling out pi
to hundreds of digits, or phenomenally long verses, or word pairs.
Most store the studied material in a so-called memory palace,
associating the numbers, words or cards with specific images they have
already memorized; then they mentally place the associated pairs in a
familiar location, like the rooms of a childhood home or the stops on
a subway line.
The Greek poet Simonides of Ceos is credited with first describing the
method, in the fifth century B.C., and it has been vividly described
in popular books, most recently “Moonwalking With Einstein,” by Joshua
Foer.
Each competitor has his or her own variation. “When I see the eight of
diamonds and the queen of spades, I picture a toilet, and my friend
Guy Plowman,” said Ben Pridmore, 37, an accountant in Derby, England,
and a former champion. “Then I put those pictures on High Street in
Cambridge, which is a street I know very well.”
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