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.

[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

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

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

The digits.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

That rhyme served me well for years.

B

[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]

What mnemonic did you use to remember it?

;)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

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

(I can do pointless....)

B

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Huron Ontario Michigan Erie Superior

HOMES

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Oh. The Great Lakes. It would be more useful if it were in order.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

The thing I always forget is the order of Ontario and Erie. I have to build the Erie Canal in my head and figure it out from there.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see the point. People think the mnemonic is harder to remember than the other of colors in the rainbow.

I did not find that to be true.

B

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is a wonderful sentence.

But yes, that was Tim's complaint also: remembering the names of the Great Lakes is not hard, and remembering them in some random order is not useful.

[alan-yee.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is because of my (young) age, but I have no idea what "Mother very thoughtfully made a jelly sandwich under no protest" is supposed to be a mnemonic of?

[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]

t = Terra = Earth

[carbonel]

It's Heinlein's mnemonic for the planets (T=Terra) from Have Space Suit, Will Travel. No P these days, of course.

I've also seen it as "Mother very easily..."

[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.

[redbird]

Right. And it's not quite as obvious to us from New York (and may be genuinely useful to someone from the south), but I'd want to know them in order, not have to keep reminding myself that no, Huron isn't at either end.

[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.

[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.