What other useful/fun skills can be learned through rote memorization? Bonus points if you can provide a website or app to learn/practice the skill.
- Peg system – it's a very simple rhyming mnemonic that helps you memorize a list of 10–20 items by quickly assigning visual imagery to each number. It's more of a parlor trick than anything, but it's pretty fun.
Here's the list for ten (but you can go much farther than this)
Then you take the list of things (grocery list, etc) you want to quickly memorize:1 - Sun 2 - Shoe 3 - Tree 4 - Gore 5 - Hive 6 - Sticks 7 - Heaven 8 - Gate 9 - Vine 10 - Hen
and quickly create tiny visuals for each one:1 - Viking 2 - Ink Pot 3 - Matador ...1 - A longboat rows around the spherical face of the sun each of vikings dipping their flagons into the solar flares
2 - A old man accidentally knocks over his ink pot spilling it onto his shoes
3 - An Tree ent holds a cape and taunts the uruk-hai into charging at him
You'll find its trivial for somebody to call out a number and to recall the associated item. Over time you'll also find yourself getting extremely quick at it as well.
- The algorithm I mentioned in the OP is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule
I practiced the algorithm by replacing my doomscrolling time on a trainer app (https://whattheday.com/) over the last 3 weeks. I went from taking 2-20 minutes to usually get the wrong result to about 95% accuracy in 10 seconds.
This training app to teach you to play piano by ear and to sight read also got posted today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556210
- 1. Rubiks cube
2. Wordle. It’s much more a game of probability than anything else so start by eliminating the most common consonants and vowels. I am averaging word selection on the third row.
3. As a typical software developer can get a better job by memorizing all the details of common digital transmission mechanisms from the specifications. It’s how I escaped JavaScript insanity.
4. You can get a gardening green thumb by memorizing plant details, knowing the chemistry of your dirt, and buying old bananas by the case for conversion into a fertilizer slurry.