About the speaker: Ed is a Grandmaster of memory and educational speaker. He was ranked 7th overall in the 2007 World Memory Championships. His party tricks include the ability to memorise 1000 numbers in an hour, 10 decks of cards in an hour and one deck in under 2 minutes. In 2005, Ed competed unofficially in the US Memory Championships (which is only open to US citizens). Though his score wasn't officially tabulated, he would have won hands down. In the random words event, he managed 150 words in five minutes, 50 more than the best American score. In the same year, he trained journalist Joshua Foer (brother of Jonathan Safran) to win the US Memory Championships.
Further information about this Talk
To read more about Ed and get hold of his book click here.
To read about Josh Foer's romp to victory, click here.
Key Points Covered in This Talk:
- The use of imagery: These memory techniques can be used by all children (and adults) of all ability. Often children who don't do well at school, are over active, or have learning difficulties such as dyslexia find the use of this kind of imagery fits their natural manner, intuitions and how they desire to think. One can think of memory as a process of thinking around in one's head. Almost everything in school is in one form or another memory. It is exceedingly boring and ineffective to memorise by rote. The far more effective and enjoyable approach is to transform information so it becomes unforgettable. People forget things when the image which has arisen in their mind has been insufficiently rigorous, rich, entertaining or interesting to the person involved. Memory is the flip side of perception: Anything which grabs your attention or leaps out from its environment is the kind of thing we remember. Violence, exaggeration, ludicrousness, celebrities, nakedness, the outrageous, the wonderful, the comedic, the splendid, the fabulous are the sorts of things that grab attention perceptually. The memory is exactly the same.
- History example: If you wanted to learn the American presidents you might do the following. The seventh American president was John Quincy Adams. This is a name that does not engage the mind and is therefore easily forgotten. Therefore it is important to think of ways to make this name give rise to the rich representations in the mind that are so useful for remembering. If we associate John with John Lennon, quincy with the quince fruit, adams with the adams apple we can enrich the name. If we imagine John Lennon with a quince fruit stuck in his throat causing his adams apple to protrude we get a much richer image of John Quincy Adams and the sort of thing which the child as well as the adult brain can better deal with. The next president is Andrew Jackson. We can associate him with Michael Jackson and can associate Andrew with hands. If we imagine Michael Jackson moon walking on his hands away from John Lennon then we have a much easier way of remembering these two presidents.
- Vocabulary example: The French word for a poster is Affiche and it's feminine. For this you could imagine a feminine looking fish attaching a poster to the wall.
- Science example: To learn the electromagnetic spectrum you could use the following story. Gamma ray can be associated with gammon and therefore a pig, x-ray with a medical x-ray, UV with a sun tan, visible spectrum with a rainbow, infrared with mobile phones, microwave with a microwave and radio waves with radios. A pig (gamma ray) breaks his leg and has an x-ray (x-ray). After the x-ray the pig goes to the UV (UV ray) tanning parlor to get a tan. Feeling hot the pig climbs a rainbow (visible spectrum) to cool off. On top of the rainbow he remembers he is hungry so uses his mobil phone (infrared) to get his friend to turn on the microwave (microwave). The pig will return home to eat whilst listening to the radio (radio wave).