My Results

I’ve polled students and teachers and found that, while memorization aids/mnemonics can help a student recall something, the best students manage to learn without them.  Regardless of if the topic is algebra or a foreign language, these crutches seem great at first but eventually just get in the way of real understanding.

Some people swear by mnemonics, including many polyglots whose learning ability I trust and even admire.  I, on the other hand, hate them.  I have never known someone who uses a memorization technique to learn material as quickly or reliably as those who don’t.  I’m not saying that they don’t work – I’m saying that they hinder full comprehension.

Reason 1: Extra Bits of Data

Let me tell a story about an absolutely horrible way to memorize something (I know this is a horrible memory technique, but the story is meant to illustrate a wider problem):

When I was learning Chinese I needed to learn my “left” and “right” very early to be able to direct a taxi.  These are zuo3 (左) and you4 (右) respectively.  I noticed something interesting: ‘z’ comes second in the alphabet, but it was first (left side) and vice-versa.  It made perfect sense to me at the time, and I set about remembering my left from my right in this way.

One problem (among many) is that this type of distinction is a negation.  My memory technique was to say “this is NOT like this.”  This ignores a fundamental way the human brain works: by storing every distinct concept separately.  In other words, the concept not like this is formed by adding two concepts: like this and not.

This partially illustrates my problem with mnemonics and memory techniques.  Though the brain is malleable, it is not infinite – learning is a process of rearrangement.  When we use these “techniques” we are attaching extra data to something uncessarily.

Reason 2: Invalid Connections

Some may argue that even though we’re using “extra data” to create the memory technique, the tradeoff is worth it because it is easier to remember.  I would reply that although memory techniques are useful for recall in the short term, they are ultimately harmful.

The brain is a pattern recognition and matching machine.  Each neuron (or, more abstractly, idea) is connected to many many others.  When we talk about recollection we are not talking about “does this idea/neuron exist or not?”  Rather, we’re talking about “how easy is the idea to access given what I am currently thinking about?”

Ever wonder why when somebody forgets something (say, the name of an actor) everyone else around them also seems to not be able to remember?  This is an actual neurological phenomenon which has been studied.  By voicing our memory failure we set everyone else down this same train of thought, making it more difficult to get from their current thought pattern to the answer.  Nobody “lost” anything, they were all just put in a state where it was harder to recall.

If you associate the Spanish word for a bus station with, say, a picture of a baseball player (as some visualization memory techniques might suggest) I believe you have created a harmful connection.  In order to trigger your recall technique you need to go through the intermediary step of thinking of the baseball player.  This is artificial.  The word should simply come to mind when it is needed based upon simply thinking about a bus station.

If your goal is simple to be able to recall information, then memory techniques are perfectly valid.  To learn a language to fluency, though, requires that you recall information without the hesitation that will always be caused by these intermediary steps.

Just like with tying a string around your finger to remember something, it is easy to completely forget the context and thus not remember (except to remember that you forgot something).  The brain stores the idea “I need to remember something” but does not link it to what that something actually is.

An Example: PEMDAS

If you ever learned algebra, you probably learned something like “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” – or some other silly acronym to remember the letters PEMDAS.  Using this technique you can effectively recall the “order of operations” (for example, Multiplication comes before Addition).

I’m not disputing that the technique generally works.  If all you need to do is pass a test, it is probably even a good thing to learn… but if you ask the top students in a class, the ones who finish the fastest and seem to understand the material implicitly, I bet you’ll find that none of them use this technique.  Why?  It obfuscates the actual material.

When you use PEMDAS, the second thing you do (after writing down the acronym) is to try to remember what each letter means.  No matter how many times I look at it, I’m still tempted to say that “P” stands for “Plus” (it actually represents “parenthesis”).  Even if you properly arrange and order the operations, you now need to remember how to apply the technique.  On one hand, it is absolutely crucial that you do Parenthesis before, say, Exponents.  On the other hand, Addition and Subtraction are communicative.

In other words, it is easy to make mistakes in the process of translating the recall device back into usable information.

I could go on and on, but the point is this: all the rules get in the way of actual learning.

A “good” connection, though, encourages learning through comprehension.  Remembering that D comes before A because of some acronym has nothing to do with actually understanding the material.  However, if you understand exactly what Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction are, you already implicitly understand which ones must come first (the higher-order operations).  Rather than creating a system to remember a rule, you understand the the logic which created the rule itself.  This is a “good connection.”

So what are “good” connections?

In case you’re wondering, no, this picture isn’t of neurons – it is a visualization of the internet… but its pretty cool how similar they are in form and structure.

Ideally, a foreign language word comes to mind given only two pieces of information:

1. I am speaking XXXX language
2. I am thinking of XXXX

Anything other than these two pieces of information is a crutch that should be avoided.  Only by developing connections in this way can any knowledge become contextually independent.  In other words, the bit of information is remembered if you’re taking a test, running a marathon, reading a book, have a gun to your head, etc.

The only way to foster specifically these sorts of connections is to be forced to encounter the knowledge (words) in many different scenarios.  I like flashcards as one starting point because if you do them quickly (<4 seconds per card) they force your brain to be reactionary – no time to sit and ponder the meaning.  Much more is needed to truly internalize knowledge, though.  The same words need to be used in conversation, read in a book, etc.  Only then can they become contextually independent.

Even with subjects like math, this means more than simply doing the homework problems.  Again, it is possible to apply facts without gaining knowledge.  Math is beautiful because it builds logically upon itself (well, okay, let’s ignore higher order Calculus and such with that statement), so if you understand what addition is and you have a good teacher you should be able to conceptually grasp how multiplication is really the same thing.

In short, the best students will find different ways to approach the material until they find an angle which makes it make sense.  Whatever it takes, making sense is the most valuable thing that you can possibly have when learning, because it suggests that the brain has properly linked the information to the other related concepts.

When Should Memory Aids be Used?

I still remember the old rhyme “i before e except after c” and even use it sometimes without feeling bad about it.  These techniques are useful when you’re trying to have a fallback technique for correctly recalling data, and are not concerned with the speed of recall or the thoroughness of your comprehension of the topic.

Finally, here’s a website with some links to memory tools.

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