I apologize if this topic was covered in the course, but I don't remember hearing it come up. Suppose I want to memorize the presidents of the US. Since there are 43 so far, is there a way to memorize more than 26 things?

For 27 I could perhaps link 2 to 7, having bugs bunny in a garden shaking hands with President Taft?

You can link it with any two ABC list you create. You may choose to link the first 26 to your ABC list and your second 26 to another list such as animals.

The Anchorman list could be called "The Numerical Order of the Alphabet" It helps you to identify that S is the 19th letter of the alphabet.

In remembering the presidents the Second President might be with bugs bunny on your anchorman list and the 28th president might be associated with the badger on your animal list. The number of the president is 2 + 26 because he's on your second list. The 27th president could be Taffy all over an Anteater. You know the first letter of the alphabet is A (1+26 because this is the animal list) The beauty is you can use any animal. In the Anchorman list 5 is elephant. Another animal that starts with E is Emu The image has changed but the postion and cue of the first letter remain the same 5 +26=31 you could associate the 31st president with any animal that starts with E.

Your idea works for a handful of items but how would you deal with the number 30 and 40? Also you will have 10 president that are somehow associated with camp or camping if you keep that association.

Even if you haven't created a list for animals You can write it as you associate the presidents.

Alex

Alex, thanks for your ideas. It seems like your suggestions would work, but it would be nice to be able to map the second abc list to numbers. Perhaps we could say that a is for anteaters which represents 27 because there are 27 ants in the hole or something like that?

Or perhaps I could reuse the anchorman list so that the anchorman also represents 27 somehow, like there are 27 chairs for the 1 anchorman to choose from.

You could do that or you could say all animals = the anchorman list plus 26. Easier to remember for me. So if I forget bhat ceetah is 29 I can work it out... there is no reason why you cannot add a because.

I wouldn't use the same list again because of the common images. They can create a swap beteen the bugs bunny 2 and bugs bunny 28 president because of the similarity of the images.

Alex

I was able to use the animal technique to memorize and match the titles and authors of 35 poems for a literature and composition class I just finished. I did it in very little time. I think that in itself paid for the course right there. Everyone else in class was freaking out because they did not realize they had to know the names of the authors too.

Hey that's great.

I'm sure that folks would like to know a little more about "how" you did it.

Did you use the anchorman list followed with an animal list (or a different list)?

Did you create a because it has [number]?

One I know many would love to know... a couple of examples of how you created the associations. Would you pick one or two and give an example how you associated them?

Tips like that will help get creative juices flowing. I'd love to see more ideas how people are using the ABC list.

Again well done on using your memory.

Alex

Yep indeedy, let's hear it swingkid

I really want to start using this course more, but can't get into a flow.I think that's what I need.Just to get started and then once I'm in that "flow" I'll be fine.........

Hey Guys,
I guess a few examples are in order. I used the technique Alex suggested. For the first twenty-six poems and authors, I used the regular anchorman list, then for the last ten I used animals.

To memorize the poems I first made a list so that I wouldn't forget any and numbered them arbitrarily. There are some interesting examples of how I remembered these poems and authors. One of the more interesting is "Counting the Beats" by Robert Graves. This happened to be number 15 on my list, so I visualized an olympic stadium for 15(=0). In the middle of the field, I visualized a guy robbing a grave (helps me remember the name Robert Graves). In the grave were a young couple lying together counting each others heart beats (which is kind of what the poem is about).

When I got to the twenty-seventh poem, I started using animals. For "A" I used the armadillo because we had recently read a poem called "The Armadillo" by Elizabeth Bishop. That was actually a bit confusing because the animal I used to remember the poem itself was not the armadillo but a frog ("The Armadillo" was number 32 on my list, so 26+6=32, and 6=F)

An interesting example of one of these is "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke. This one was 30 on my list, and for the letter "D" I used the dog. To remember the poem, I visualized a father and child waltzing through the house making quite a raucous. Suddenly they trip on a dog. When the look at the dog there is no dog collar just a red key tied around the dog's neck. (red key is supposed to sound like Roethke).

I used similar visualizations for the rest of them. I hope these make sense or helps some.

Cheers

I loved your examples thanks for sharing!

Alex