Question of the day

[mrissa]

What's the most pointless mnemonic you've ever had to learn?

I think mine is HOMES, because seriously, what upper Midwestern kid can't remember the Great Lakes without a five-letter word? But then there's also PAY HERB Czechs, and that's pretty useless, because who needs to remember the Warsaw Pact countries these days? I also never liked that East Germany just got E and they couldn't come up with anything for C and so went with Czechs.

Comments

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Roy G. Biv is pretty pointless, for the same reason as HOMES.

[aedifica]

I remember it being useful waaaay back when I learned it; I didn't know the order of the colors yet.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I found ROY G BIV useful. It's how I remembered the colors of the rainbow. What's HOMES?

B

[prock.livejournal.com]

I'll go with the rhyme:

30 days hath September,
April, June and November,
All the rest have 31,
Excepting February alone
(And that has 28 days clear,
With 29 in each leap year).

Which was so difficult that I could never remember it. Years later, I learned the knuckle one.

http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/dayspcm.htm

[carbonel]

That's the one I grew up with, and found it useful.

The redundant ones were Roy G. Biv and "Mother very thoughtfully made a jelly sandwich under no protest," since I already knew the things they were mnemonics of. But no one forced me to learn them, after all.

Then there's an orphaned mnemonic: "Never lower Tillie's pants; mother might come home." I know it's the bones of the wrist, but I encountered it long after my need (and memory) of the wrist bones had long since faded. The mnemonic remains because it's so, well, memorable.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

I tend to create pointless mnemonics. It's one of the ways I learn.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if that word "pointless" really means what you think it does? :-)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I don't recall being required to learn mnemonics. Sometimes they were offered officially, sometimes I made one up if I wanted one, sometimes I found them in the literature. Anyway, that prevents me from answering the actual question. And mnemonics other people like that I consider pointless isn't interesting, that I can see (at least I don't have any interesting cases to hand).

Maybe the question comes down to mnemonics for things that were offered to people long after they already knew the thing?

Once I learn something with a mnemonic I seem to use that forever. I can't run through the alphabet without hearing the tune (not a classic acronymic mnemonic, but it's one in the broader sense). Although I do move from letter to letter (and month to month, too) without using the mnemonics now, so I guess progress is possible. Maybe it's just that when doing the entire list I can't suppress the mnemonic.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"Our table top faces front so Sally entertains next time."

The digits.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Or maybe "OFF," for remembering how many there are in a gross.

(I can do pointless....)

B

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

The least helpful mnemonic I ever learned was the one for the early Roman Emperors: A True Conservative Cannot Govern Wisely for They Do Not Hate Avarice Altogether. Because Nero ends up being one of the n's in "Cannot" and Trajan has to be the T in "Not", and it doesn't do a damned thing to help you with all those short-lived emperors in 68-69 AD who weren't named Galba.

Also, the damned thing doesn't even show up on a google search, and I strongly suspect that my Latin teacher made it up to torment us.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I really hate it when people screw up something that could easily be non-screwed up. Cannot as CanNoT, for example, is just ridiculous. You could easily write it as A Thoughtful Conservative Can Never Truly Govern Wisely, and get the initials in as useful. I mean, really.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

Actually, that's a lie. I love that mnemonic, and I used it just the other day to help my stepdaughter in British Lit.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

I love that one!

[dancing-crow.livejournal.com]

I still remember one from 8th grade that I have forgotten the objects that were mnemed: A Jungle Parrot Never Carries Jellybeans. It was Social Studies, so the very basis rendered me unconscious with boredom.

I did make one that persisted for a couple years in the Geology Department: Cows Outside Do Moo Politely Please = Cambrian, Ordovician, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian, the ages of the American Paleozoic.

[stfg.livejournal.com]

I am unhappy with the mnemonics for cranial nerves. The problem is that the one I like, "On Old Olympus Towering Tops, A Finn and German Viewed Some Hops," is no longer accurate since the Spinal Accessory Nerve got renamed and is now the Accessory Nerve. "A Finn and German Viewed A Hops" just doesn't have the same ring. The mnemonic that is accurate is gross and sexist. I end up running through them both, dismayed that the gross and sexist one is stuck in my head.

If you want to hear what the gross and sexist one is, let me know, but I didn't want to randomly post it in someone else's blog.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, I don't have to hear random gross sexism. Thanks for thinking that one through before doing it.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

It's a useful acronym to someone else, just not me, but:

BrINClHOF

The elements that appear naturally as pairs:

Br2, I2, N2, Cl2, H2, O2, F2.

[zelda888.livejournal.com]

My actually me this one-- only rearranged so that it's pronounceable. Hoffbrinkle!

This sounds very silly and amuses me greatly, plus it actually is quite useful for me. Before, I "just knew" the diatomics, and "just knowing" is a lousy position from which to teach.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

The mnemonic I disliked as a teacher was the order of operations as "Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally." Lord only knows what Sally did, all those years ago, that we're still apologizing for the old dear. But worse, it gives students the false impression that they ought to simplify all multiplication before division, and all addition before subtraction.

As a student, I was taught, for no good reason, a mnemonic for a bunch of common prepositions: "The fog looms really thick." Just about every consonant in there is supposed to represent a preposition. Why would you ever want to know a list of prepositions?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The preposition thing amuses me because I was taught a list of them as a way to spot prepositional phrases (which seems backwards to me--teach the function!), and I can rattle off "aboard about above across after against along among" to this very day--none of which starts with a consonant.

[vcmw]

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is fairly useless to me, since I don't play an instrument and can't read music. I recall that FACE was for the ones in between, perhaps? (Then it would be E F G A B C D E F, which makes sense I guess).

[columbina.livejournal.com]

These would be my nominee, because THE NOTES ARE RIGHT THERE ON THE PIANO was something akin to my mental reaction to them. I mean, no, not literally printed on the keys, but, I mean, if you can figure out what one note looks like (e.g. from the arrangement of black and white keys), then is it so hard to loop through seven letters of the alphabet in order over and over?

It's probably worth adding at this point that all non-piano instruments utterly confound me - because I can't see where the notes are.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Not at all pointless, but I know the quadratic equation cold because you can sing it to the tune of "Row, row, row your boat..."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I learned it to "Pop Goes the Weasel."

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

It's not quite a mnemonic, but... One of my coworkers asked my boss's boss how to spell his last name, because he wanted to email him something. The boss replied that if we type "moron" into the address line, Outlook will fill in the rest. So now I can't help think of that whenever I email him.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You're lucky you have the kind of boss where you hadn't already been tempted to try it.

My mother has a cousin whose married name we all learned to spell to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club song, because it is Polish and non-intuitive for wee Anglophones.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Peter Put Mary On Estrogen Pills.

It's ages or epochs or cenes or zoics or something, and since it isn't my mnemonic I can never remember what it's for.

[misquoted.livejournal.com]

Crazy college girls eat pizza continuously.

I have no idea where I learned it, or if a friend in HS made it up, or what.

It's useless because it's all I remember of what MIGHT have been a longer sentence to remember the books of the New Testament.

(The first five are easily memorized by most Christians because they are talked about a lot, or at least the Gospels are: Matthew Mark Luke John Acts Romans.)

Then you've got 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philipians, Colossians.

Then you've got the 5 T's: 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus. And on like that.

See? Useless.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

(Matthew Mark Luke John
Hold the horse 'til I get on.)

[timprov.livejournal.com]

My very exhibitionist mailman just sent us nude photos.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Because you were in the car thinking about mnemonics rather than in the post office sending txanne something with me, you didn't hear the woman complaining about how they NEVER HAD these problems when MIKE was their mailman for TWENTY-THREE YEARS, never ONCE had these problems.

And now I am alarmed to find out why.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I learnt Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (or maybe 'gained battles', depending on who you ask) after I learnt the colours of the rainbow and 'How I wish I could calculate Pi' years after I'd learnt more digits of Pi than that, but I don't remember ever being forced to learn a mnemonic. Either you used the mnemonic or didn't, usually.

Hmm, which ones have stuck, though? We did have a phrase for working out sines and cosines but just treating SOHCAHTOA as a pronounceable word worked for me. Two not-otherwise-terribly-memorable ones have stuck in my memory because the teacher got the class to come up with them: Elephants And Dogs Give Blood Easily for guitar strings and King George Couldn't Say 'Apples' for the usual order of things in a sung Mass. A couple of spelling ones: 'Rhythm Has Your Two Hips Moving', and 'One Collar and two Socks' for 'necessary' - that one has mainly stayed memorable because its accompanying illustration was a cartoon vicar wearing only the aforementioned items of clothing and an exceedingly embarrassed expression.

I still can't get all the way through one for the Kings and Queens of England:
Willie, Willie, Henry, Stee,
Henry, Dick, John, Henry Three;

(Then I have to stop, skip ahead, and work out how many Edwards and Richards I've missed. It's quite confusing having some numbers being the number of Edwards who arrive at once and others representing the position within the total list of Edwards)

Edwards Three and Richard Two,
Henry Four, Five, Six, then who?

Edwards Four, Five, Dick the bad,
Henrys Seven, Eight, Ned the lad.

And after that I can generally remember the monarchs better than their rhymes anyway.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I always confused SOHCAHTOA with CROATOAN, which led to a surprising frequency of triangles disappearing mysteriously.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

Did Mary Ever Visit Brighton?

British peerage: high to Low

or

Baby Vipers Eat Many Dormice

British peerage: low to high

[genarti]

King Phillip Came Over From Germany Seasick = kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

It's not really pointless, because it was actually useful in school, but it's not really something I use on a regular basis. And yet it's graven in my memory forever more.

Possibly one of the more useless ones is "I before E, except after C, unless sounding like 'ay' as in neighbor and weigh." Useless mainly because for accuracy, one has to add a long long list of other exceptions at the end, and then it's just a list instead of any kind of mnemonic.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah, see--"Kings Play Chess On Fine-Grained Sand" may well be the most useful mnemonic I know, because I don't use it often enough that I automatically have where order goes compared to class in my head, but on the other hand I read enough stuff with biological references that it's useful to be able to access the taxonomic order without looking it up.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Many Virgins Envy Much Jazzy Sex Until Night Penetrates.

... My mom and I wrote that for a science assignment in 7th grade. That's actually still how I remember it. And it makes me laugh hard to think of us sitting there thinking of a naughty one. :D

How to spell "YACHT"

[thomasbull.livejournal.com]

Take the expression "ACHTUNG". Add a Y in front, and remove the letters after the T.