Here is a second attempt at explaining the 50 x 50 themes pre-prepared list system - starting off with a similar system that uses less themes.
Remember, above all, why you want to have a pre-prepared list
of images in sequence. As an example, you might want to be able to reference the
25th item in a list of 100. By visiting the imaginary scene of item 25 in a
pre-prepared list, you can recall a story which also involves the piece of
information which you want to remember. Some memory courses use 'phonetics'
where the consonants of a word equate to the number 25. eg. An image of a 'NaiL'
could represent the pre-prepared list item 25 IF you have a system where
N=2 and L=5. However, I am using themes and images which involve my list of
themes...
The idea is a lot like making a new word from 2 other words.
eg. a 'house-doctor' is a doctor who visits people's houses but..
combine the words differently and you get 'doctor-house' which is a
doctor's surgery.
The first word is the context; the second word is a more specific event which
involves both words together in that context.
If you had a list of 4 words [I am making them up at random right now]:
house, doctor, library, music
then you can combine them in several ways.
house + doctor
doctor + house
house + library [could be a study room in a house]
doctor + library [could be a library at a medical school]
library + doctor [could be a section of a public library where medicine books
are kept]
So a small list of words can combine to form a large number of distinct images
or scenes.
Also, if you know the order sequence of your 4 words then you can traverse
through your many word pairs in a standard repeatable order.
So, if I have 6 facts to recall then I might have each of them stored at the
first 6 scenarios of the sequence.
eg.
house + doctor
house + library
house + music
doctor + house
doctor + library
Now let's extend this idea to the list of 50 which include romance, etc..
I enumerate the themes from 0 to 49.
The first theme [law&government] is like a '0+...';
the second theme is like a '50+..' [pre-history];
So, when 2 themes combine together, and the first theme is law&government
then its sequence order rank number is 0+a second number.
You see in the table at
http://www.nakedscience.com/memory/Peg%20System%201000.htm
that each theme has an 'offset'. If 'pre-history' is the theme that combines
with 'law&government' then the offset is 1 [that is what the table says!].
So I combine 0+1 to get the answer 1.
If I had to memorise 200 items in sequence and someone asked me what item 1 is
then I would think of the '0+' theme and the offset '1' theme and then recall a
standard scene that uses those 2 themes. It is like the house+doctor idea that I
described earlier.
Here, a 'law&government' also needs to involve pre-history&primitive
ideas.
Now, you might have your own imaginative inspiration for this. Me, I imagine a
pit near my local town hall where a 5000 year-old mummy monster climbs out. The
scene is vivid and it involves the 2 themes.
And that's it. Does that make sense? The answer to 'why am I doing it?' is 'to
have a numbered sequence of images for recalling several facts in sequence'.
Other memory systems achieve this by using phonetics; I am achieving it by
combining themes.
Note that, if the themes occur in reverse order then I want '50+' followed by
'0'. Again, the table should show you what value adds to what value. So, a story
where the main theme is pre-history and the other theme is law&government
is, in my version, a primitive African tribe settling a legal dispute by having
a spear fight [a variation of something that I saw in a Tarzan film years ago!].
Again, although it is a nice system, it takes a long time to become good at a
memory system; so perhaps you should learn a system over many years rather than
for immediate use.