Page 145 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

sit there and memorize it through repetition.”

The more neural hooks you can build by evoking the senses, the easier it
will be for you to recall the concept and what it means. Beyond merely seeing

the mule, you can smell the mule and feel the same windy pressure the mule is
feeling. You can even hear the wind whistling past. The funnier and more
evocative the images, the better.

The Memory Palace Technique

The memory palace technique involves calling to mind a familiar place—like the
layout of your house—and using it as a sort of visual notepad where you can
deposit concept-images that you want to remember. All you have to do is call to

mind a place you are familiar with: your home, your route to school, or your
favorite restaurant. And voilà! In the blink of an imaginative eye, this becomes
the memory palace you’ll use as your notepad.
The memory palace technique is useful for remembering unrelated items,
such as a grocery list (milk, bread, eggs). To use the technique, you might
imagine a gigantic bottle of milk just inside your front door, the bread plopped

on the couch, and a cracked egg dribbling off the edge of the coffee table. In
other words, you’d imagine yourself walking through a place you know well,
coupled with shockingly memorable images of what you might want to
remember.
Let’s say you are trying to remember the mineral hardness scale, which
ranges from 1 to 10 (talc 1, gypsum 2, calcite 3, fluorite 4, apatite 5, orthoclase
6, quartz 7, topaz 8, corundum 9, diamond 10). You can come up with a memory

sentence mnemonic: Terrible Giants Can Find Alligators or Quaint Trolls
Conveniently Digestible. The problem is that it can still be difficult to remember
the sentence. But things become easier if you then add the memory palace. At
your front door, there is a terrible giant there, holding a can. Once inside, you
find an alligator. . . . You get the idea. If you are studying finance, economics,

chemistry, or what-have-you, you’d use the same approach.