Room 3 · Hall of Methods
The number code: how to remember long numbers
Practice-based
Numbers are hard to remember because they don’t mean anything. The number code gives them meaning. It is the method Edoardo Zeloni Magelli teaches in Memory Improvement, under the name the Mnemonic Code.
Step 1 · A letter for each digit
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| O | A | B | C | D | E | S | L | H | N |
Zero looks like an O. One to five follow the alphabet. Six starts with S, seven looks like an L turned around, eight on a digital clock looks like an H, nine starts with N. You can change any of them: the best code is the one that feels obvious to you.
Step 2 · A character for each pair
Every pair of digits becomes a pair of letters, and the pair of letters becomes a person, a place or a thing, doing something.
- 67 → S L → Saturday Night Live, and someone laughing uncontrollably.
- 01 → O A → “Aloha”: Hawaii, a flower necklace.
- 45 → D E → Germany, driving fast on the autobahn.
Step 3 · A story for each number
Split a long number into pairs and turn the characters into one ridiculous story. To remember whose number it is, set the story in that person’s home.
What research says
There is no research on this particular code. It belongs to a family of systems that turn numbers into images, widely used by memory competitors. The evidence for that family comes mostly from practice; laboratory studies of related peg systems found that they help most when the order matters (Peg system).
Practise it
Number Code trainer (coming soon) · Memory Test
Sources (2)
- Zeloni Magelli E (2020). Memory Improvement, chapter 4, “Numbers and Mnemonics”.
- Roediger HL (1980). The effectiveness of four mnemonics in ordering recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 6(5):558–567. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.6.5.558