Matrix Biography People

An easier 10,000 scene peg system

By using computer software, I created thousands of mnemonic peg scene phrases automatically - but only about half the 10,000 desired pegs were created. And I am daunted by the project of filling in the gaps. There is another type of peg system which I could build, in part, by using some of that raw material...

The matrix dilemma

Sometimes, I receive mail from people who suggest the following type of scenario:

There is a bag of 100 pieces of paper - each contains the name of a person;

there is also a bag of 100 pieces of paper where each piece describes an action which a person can do.

In combination, there are 1000s of person-action possibilities; there is a matrix of randomly drawn people doing randomly drawn actions.

And what people suggest is that a kind of value image system can be made by combining the 2 sources of 100 concepts.

eg. a value system of 100 x 100 scenarios: 10,000 unique scenarios.

This is an attractive proposition; if true, with very little work, we would have, at our finger tips, a huge peg system. However, it is my opinion that a large number of people would muddle their scenarios.

What I suggest would happen is that the scenarios would be so similar in either the person or the action that ambitious memory projects would have muddled recall where one scene is mistaken for another.

However, I do not completely dismiss the idea of using a matrix to represent a sequence of 10,000 peg scenarios - I just believe that it needs more uniqueness in its scenarios so that there is significantly less chance of confusing one scene with another.

This article will present just one idea for achieving that increased uniqueness.

Note: Tony Buzan's 'Master Your Memory' uses the term 'matrix' when he combines objects to create scenarios - 'matrix' is a mathematical term and it is used in database terminology too. In other work, he has suggested changing the nature of an image by applying one of a small list of visual special effects to it. What I want, for me, is jointly:

1. Large visual alteration when an effect is applied, and for it to be dissimilar to other scenes where the same effect is applied; and

2. Low re-use of any image so that different peg scenes have a very low chance of being muddled with each other.

Biography Action scenarios

I spent time trying to represent 52 x 26 people for a card memorisation system. I adjusted it into a 40 x 25 collection of people so that numbers from 000 to 999 may be expressed as images of people. In short, there is a list of 1000 people - I obtained them from internet biographies and their first name and surname initial relate to their three digit number. The full explanation would require a separate article.

If each person's three digits are considered to be the first three digits of a four-digit number then an action may be used to represent the fourth digit. Thus, a scene involving a person and an action would translate into four-digit number.

However, I would muddle these scenes if my list of actions is short. So, I introduced 1000 actions as follows:

The number 1234 can be represented as person 123 doing action 234. The 123 comes from the first three digits and the 234 comes from the final three digits. Similarly, 1357 can be represented as person 135 does action 357. In this way, there will only ever be 10 scenes involving any person and there will only ever be 10 scenes involving a particular action.

In the next article are some examples such as person 000 meeting action 001 to give four-digit number 0001.

Note: The 10,000th peg may be based on a 000 person and action 000 or be an invention of your choice.

The 1000 actions come from the same software which I had initially hoped would produce 10,000 pegs for me.

Knock-on effect benefits

The actions keywords could be used to make a 1000 item system. eg. 001 action is based on the phrase: 'the third degree' . I could search for an image on a search engine which represents 'the third degree' or I could imagine a relevant image. That could be item 001 of a value system.