I had to memorise tons of dates and figures for my final exams at Oxford.
As an English student, I had to read tons of books and criticisms and commentaries. And when I had to talk about them in essays, I needed to put the date in brackets beside the name of the person I was quoting.
The only people who have to remember more dates than English students are lawyers (case history dates) and historians (obviously).
I don’t envy them.
At least, I don’t envy them if they don’t use the peg system.
If they use the peg system they can actually make memorising tons of dates fun, quicker, and more likely to stick in your brain.
The peg system basically involves associating numbers with concrete images.
Once you have memorised the images associated with each number, you can easily attach these images (and, hence, the numbers) to new information.
There are two main peg systems.
A rhyming peg system and a letter system.
How to Use the Rhyming Peg System
We’re going to take the numbers from zero through to ten and associate one strong concrete image that rhymes with the number.
This is what that looks like:
- 0 – hero (because it rhymes with zero)
- 1 – gun (because it rhymes with one)
- 2 – shoes (because… well, you get it)
- 3 – tree
- 4 – door
- 5 – hive
- 6 – bricks
- 7 – heaven
- 8 – gate
- 9 – wine
- 10 – hen
Then when you have a date you need to memorise, you can use some of these images to create a vivid mental picture that is super sticky and easier to remember.
If there’s a zero in the date, you’ll squeeze superman or batman (or some other “hero”) into your mental image.
If there’s a five in the date, you’ll make sure you can vividly see a beehive in the mental image you construct.
For example, let’s just say you’re studying Law and you need to remember when the case of Boddington v British Transport Police took place.
This case took place in 1998 and involved a Mr Boddington who was caught smoking in a railway carriage (naughty, naughty).
So how do you remember that the case took place in 1998?
You probably could remember that pretty easily on its own.
But Law students have hundreds of cases to remember and it’s simply not practical to think you’ll remember strings of numbers for each and every one of them.
So we use the rhyming peg system to make it easier.
We’ll need to use the images of a gun (one), two bottles of wine (two nines) and a gate (eight) to make the year 1998.
What we could do is imagine Mr Boddington smoking his cigarette on the train carriage.
Then, Fugitive-style, a British Transport Police officer appears and points his gun at the smoking man.
He doesn’t want to harm him, but seeing two bottles of wine (a big red and a big white, those oversized party bottles), he takes aim and fires at them, shattering them both.
Mr Boddington screams in alarm and legs it off the train where he leaps over a giant gate.
Now it takes a little time to construct that story, but when it comes time to recall the case, you no longer need to try to brute-force the date into your memory.
You can just summon that little story.
You see the gun, the two bottles of wine, and the gate.
So you know this case happened in 1998!
How to Use the Letter Peg System
If the rhyming peg system doesn’t work for you, you can always add the letter peg system to your arsenal.
This one’s slightly more complicated, but is still worth learning because this will reduce the amount of images you need to add to your story.
With this system, each number is associated with a letter or letters.
Like this:
- 0 – s, x, z, soft c
- 1 – t, d
- 2 – n
- 3 – m
- 4 – r
- 5 – l
- 6 – sh, ch, j, soft g
- 7 – c, k, q, hard g
- 8 – f, v
- 9 – p, b
It seems kind of random how we came to assigning those particular letters to those numbers, but there is a logic to it that’s easy to remember.
Zero, as a number (0), has no vertical strokes. Neither do the letters S and Z. So we pair them up. As for the x and soft c, they have similar sounds to the S and Z sounds, so we put them in this category too.
One, as a number (1), has one vertical stroke. So do the letters T and D.
Two, when we mark it in a tally system, has two vertical strokes and so does the letter N.
Three, again represented as a tally, has three vertical strokes and so does M.
Four ends with an ‘r’ sound, so we’ll assign the letter R to four.
Five… now this is a stretch, but once you hear it you’ll remember it. The left hand, which has FIVE fingers, can form an L shape with the index and thumb. So we’ll use the letter L to represent 5.
Six is assigned a soft g because it looks like a g if you flip the number. Then we can also associate sounds similar to that soft g sound, like sh, cha, and j.
Seven gets the k sound because the letter looks like two smaller sevens. Then we’ll also utilise similar sounds, so we get a hard c, q, and hard g sound.
Eight is assigned and f because when we write that letter in cursive writing it looks like an eight with the loops. And v has a similar sound to f (it’s known as a fricative sound) so we’ll associate that too.
Nine gets p and b because if we flip the number around a little bit it can look like those letters.
Once you’ve got those number associations in your head, you can use this mnemonic system to remember long strings of digits.
Just say you want to memorise pi…
Well pi is 3.1415927.
Let’s break that down into imagery…
The first three numbers, 314, give us the letters m, t, and r.
All we have to do is fill in some vowels to make a word of our choice.
So we could come up with the word ‘meteor’.
Then the two numbers are 15, which give us the letters t and l.
We could make the word ‘tail’ with that.
Then we have 927, which gives us the letters p, n, k.
With some playing around, we can make the word ‘pink’.
So all you need to remember the digits of pi is the image of a meteor with a tail that’s leaving a pink stream in its path as it flies through space.
You can also apply this system to dates or anything number based.
Both systems work extremely effectively for when it comes to remembering numbers.
All you need to do is invest a little time into remembering the systems and you’re set up with a very effective memory tool for life.
If you found this interesting, check out my free book 50 Life-Changing Study Hacks. This article was the first chapter of that book!
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