June's snippets are ready!

This month, we're going back to some favorite topics, and provide some updates and new approaches.

• Let's start the snippets with our old friend Nim. The Puzzles.com site features a few Nim-based challenges. The Classic Nim challenge shouldn't pose any difficulty for regular Grey Matters readers.

Square Nim is a bit different. At first glance, it might seem to be identical to Chocolate Nim, but there are important differences to which you need to pay attention.

Circle Nim is a bit of a double challenge. First, you may need to try and figure it out. Second, the solution is images-only. Once you realize that different pairs of images are referring to games involving odd or even number starting points, it shouldn't be too hard to understand.

• Check out the Vanishing Leprechaun trick in the following video:



These are what are known as geometric vanishes, and can be explored further in places such as Archimedes' Laboratory and the Games column in the June 1989 issue of OMNI Magazine.

Mathematician Donald Knuth put his own spin on these by using the format to compose a poem called Disappearances. If you'd like to see just how challenging it is to compose a poem in geometric vanish form, you can try making your own in Mariano Tomatis' Magic Poems Editor.

• Back in July 2011, I wrote a post about hyperthymesia, a condition in which details about every day of one's life are remembered vividly. That post included a 60 Minutes report about several people with hyperthymesia, including Taxi star Marilu Henner. Earlier this year, 60 Minutes returned to the topic with a new story dubbed Memory Wizards. This updated report is definitely worth a look!

• If you're comfortable squaring 2-digit numbers, as taught in the Mental Gym, and you think you're ready to move on to squaring 3-digit numbers, try this startlingly simple technique from Mind Math:



That's all for June's snippets. I hope you have fun exploring them!

March's snippets may be a little late, but they are here!

This month, I present several classic geometry puzzles. Not all of them are solvable, but they are all interesting.

• Let's start this with one of the longest-running, and apparently most maddening, geometry puzzles in history! James Grime discusses “squaring the circle,” the challenge of constructing a square and a circle with the same area, using only a straight edge and a compass, in a finite number of steps:



Despite the impossibility, you can find many interesting approaches which have been tried over the years.

• One geometry puzzle that recently gained plenty of attention over at Gizmodo is the Winston Freer Tile Puzzle. You can purchase your own here, or a smaller version here, but ponder the seeming impossibility of it first:



• James Tanton posted an interesting geometric challenge which can be presented in stages. The first challenge is just to determine the size of an arc without a protractor. This is usually solved by finding the center first, but can you do it without finding the center?



• Sometimes geometry itself is the puzzle! Jeff Dekofsky, via TedEd, discusses Euclid's puzzling parallel postulate. This is another part of geometry in which the answer will be forever closed off to us, but will remain interesting to ponder:



• I'll wrap March's snippets with Emma Rounds' poem, “Plane Geometry,” a parody of Lewis Carroll's classic “Jabberwocky”:

‘Twas Euclid, and the theorem pi
Did plane and solid in the text,
All parallel were the radii,
And the ang-gulls convex’d.

“Beware the Wentworth-Smith, my son,
And the Loci that vacillate;
Beware the Axiom, and shun
The faithless Postulate.”

He took his Waterman in hand;
Long time the proper proof he sought;
Then rested he by the XYZ
And sat awhile in thought.

And as in inverse thought he sat
A brilliant proof, in lines of flame,
All neat and trim, it came to him,
Tangenting as it came.

“AB, CD,” reflected he–
The Waterman went snicker-snack–
He Q.E.D.-ed, and, proud indeed,
He trapezoided back.

“And hast thou proved the 29th?
Come to my arms, my radius boy!
O good for you! O one point two!”
He rhombused in his joy.

‘Twas Euclid, and the theorem pi
Did plane and solid in the text;
All parallel were the radii,
And the ang-gulls convex’d.

Happy Valentine's Day!

In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share a few favorite love poems. This might seem like a strange turn to many regular Grey Matters readers, but I've actually discussed poetry quite a bit on this blog.

Let's start with one of the most classic love poems of all time, “How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)” by...William Shakespeare, right? Surprise! The author is actually Elizabeth Barrett Browning.



Poetry can be an excellent way to improve your mind, in terms of both memorization and understanding. Memorizing a poem, which you can learn to do here, helps you carry it with you, and offers more time to think and ponder the meanings involved. Having a poem in your mind is a big advantage over leaving it on a page in a book. Shmoop.com's poetry section has wonderful guides to classic poetry. Their analysis of “How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)” is a great example, as it gives you background, summaries, and plenty of other information to help develop a better understanding.

This is love poetry as it is generally imagined - written in a loving, longing tone, full of rich, romantic imagery. That isn't a hard and fast rule, however. A more unusual tone can often help a love poem stand out, such as the darker tone of Edgar Allan Poe's “Annabel Lee”:



Shmoop.com's analysis of “Annabel Lee” starts with a great analogy to music. Once you've been pulled in by his greatest hits, like “The Raven”, it's fun to discover the intensity of this tale of love lost.

Love poetry can also be funny. If you read the text of “Root of Three”, it would sound more like a math equation than a love poem, but watch how the delivery makes a startling difference (NSFW due to language):



I've included this poem not just because it's a good example of tone, but because I know Grey Matters readers often like at least a little mathematics in the post. Fans of this type of love poem might also be tickled by “Wolfram|Alpha, Be My Valentine”.

May your Valentine's Day be filled with love, humor, and thoughtfulness!

Lately, some excellent free memory courses have been showing up on YouTube.

The price is right, and the techniques are quite useful, so in today's post, I'll show you where to find these free video memory courses.

The first course is about one of the toughest, yet most useful, things to memorize - numbers! AEMind's YouTube account features videos on many aspects of memory, mostly geared for memory competitions. Here's his first video on memorizing numbers:



The links to the whole series (as of this writing, anyway) are below:

How to Memorize Numbers Part 1
How to Memorize Numbers Part 2 | Pictures 0-9
How to Memorize Numbers Part 3 | Pictures 10-19
How to Memorize Numbers Part 4 | Pictures 20-29
How to Memorize Numbers Part 5 | Pictures 30-39
How to Memorize Numbers Part 6 | Pictures 40-49
How to Memorize Numbers Part 7 | Pictures 50-59
How to Memorize Numbers Part 8 | Pictures 60-69

You'll also be able to keep up with any newer videos in the series via my YouTube playlist, Memory Technique 5: Phonetic Peg (Major) System.

As I write this, AEMind is also beginning a series on remembering names and faces. This, of course, is one of the most useful, and most-requested, memory techniques. Below is the introductory video of the names and faces series, and you can keep up with future releases through my Memory Feat: Names and Faces YouTube playlist.



Our next course comes from Kerin Gedge from New Zealand. Kerin's course teaches how to memorize long texts word-for-word. He teaches it from the standpoint of memorizing Bible scripture, but the techniques are equally useful for memorizing scripts, music lyrics, speeches, and more. Below is the introductory video of the series:



Here's the complete list of Kerin's text-memorization videos:

How To Memorize: An Introduction
How To Memorize Part 2: The Verbal Technique
How To Memorize Part 3: More on the verbal technique
How To Memorize Part 4: Fusing the Verbal Techniques
How To Memorize Part 5: The Handwriting Technique
How To Memorize Part 6: The Typing Technique
How To Memorize Part 7: Fusing all the techniques
How To Memorize: Closing Statements
How To Memorize: Bonus Video

My Memory Techniques: Misc. Techniques playlist contains these and several other memory techniques that are not often covered.

If you're especially interested in memorizing long texts word-for-word, you also might want to check out my free web app, Vertbatim 2.

In the US and Canada, April is national poetry month! (Sorry, Great Britain, you'll have to wait until October.)

Since memory is one of my favorite topics, I'll take a look at memorizing poetry in this post.

To most people, memorizing poetry sounds like something out of 19th century schoolhouses or 1960s beatnik coffee shops. The truth is, there are plenty of good reasons to learn to memorize poetry, especially if it's something you want to do, as opposed to something you're being forced to do. In Five Benefits of Memorizing Poems there are the usual education reasons. If that's not enough, Ten Reasons You Should Memorize Poetry expands on this, including some reasons that are right down my alley, including:

1) It is a brain challenge. Got a kid with a strong memory? I’ve got some long poems for you. Interested in history? Learn a poem based on a historical event or some of the poetry of that period. For anyone seeking a way to challenge a gifted child in way that is free (!) and virtually unlimited, you’ve found it. Even copying poems down (or lines of poems) and illustrating them is a wonderful activity for younger children.
...
8) It’s a great party trick. If you’re ever stuck for a spur of the moment talent, you’re in luck if you’ve got a poem in your mind you can whip out and recite from memory. It’s easy, it needs no props, and you will not be doing the same tired trick as everyone else. Unless they read this blog.

Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn, a noted mathematician, passed away on February 17, 2012, at the age of 93.

He made contributions to many branches of mathematics, but those interested in recreational mathematics will be especially interested in discovery of what is known today as the de Bruijn sequences. What exactly are they and more importantly, how are they used?

If I asked you to list all the possible pairs in which you could combine a 1 and 0, that's simple to do. The possible pairs are 00, 01, 10, 11. If we combine them into one long sequence of numbers, it would look like this: 00011011.

Now, what if I asked you to give me the shortest possible sequence of 0s and 1s that contains all their possible pairs? This is a little trickier, but it turns out that the answer is simply 0011. A quick look and you can find 00, 01, 11 and...wait, what about 10? If you repeat the sequence (00110011...and so on), you'll note that the 10 is found by combining the final 1 of the sequence with the initial 0.

You can't make a shorter cyclic sequence of numbers than 0011 that contains every possible pair of 0s and 1s, so this is a de Bruijn sequence.

In a more general sense, a de Bruijn sequence is the shortest possible cyclic sequence in which given k symbols, you can find all possible permutations of length n. The less technical definition of a de Bruijn sequence is simply “every possible arrangement squeezed into the smallest possible space.”

In our simple example above, we dealt with an “alphabet” of 2 symbols, so k=2, and we were looking for all possible pairs, so n=2. In mathematical notation, this is often simple written as B(k,n), so our example would be B(2,2).

Such sequences are known to have been used as long ago as 200 BCE, but de Bruijn's breakthrough, with help from Tatyana Pavlovna Ehrenfest, was in finding a general approach for determining the sequence for any B(k,n).

If you want to see how challenging this can get as k and n get larger, consider James Grime's combination lock puzzle:



Here, you're using an alphabet of 10 symbols, and looking for every possible sequence of 4 numbers, or B(10,4). Try working out the simpler challenges in the above video, and then watch James Grime's solution video, along with the method used to solve them:



Applying the formula mentioned in the video above, you can quickly determine that B(10,4) is going to be 10⁴, or 10,000 digits long. Fortunately, you only need to find 1 of the many possible de Bruijn sequences.

Besides picking locks, mathematicians have taken advantage of de Bruijn sequences for use in card tricks. Colm Mulcahy explains a basic use in his December 2008 Card Colm column.

Since the study of these sequences is applicable to so many fields, it's amazing where you can find a use for them. Playing around with card tricks based on the de Bruijn sequence led one researcher to discover an improved way to make files smaller.

In the recently-released book Magical Mathematics, authors Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham delve even deeper into de Bruijn sequences and card tricks. You can get a preview of part of that chapter by clicking on the Google Preview button below:



In that book, there are some ingenious uses for de Bruijn sequences with cards, but there's one magician whose work has taken them to an entirely new level. If you're a member of the Magic Café, explore Leo Boudreau's online work, as well as his written work, with de Bruijn sequences. Leo Boudreau work largely involves binary numbers, so if you like his work, learning a good binary number memory system can turn his amazing routines into miracles.

Even with this lengthy post, we've barely delved into only one part of N. G. de Bruijn's body of work. The world was better for having him in it, and he will be truly missed.

Memorizing a piece such as a speech, poem, or music lyrics is often considered one of the biggest memory challenges, as they need to memorized word-for-word.

With most other memory techniques, you can get away with remembering the general concept. For example, when memorizing playing cards mnemonics, you simply have to remember the mnemonic itself, not an entire sentence structure.

However, for a speeches or poems, the exact wording is imperative. How exactly do you go about this? In this post, we'll look at some iOS apps that help you do just that.

The reason I'm looking at iOS apps in particular is simply because the mobile devices I regularly use use iOS. For those who do use Android or other mobile operating systems, I'll start with two text memorization apps that can be accessed with any mobile device on the web. These first two are also both free to use.

The first is Verbatim 2, my own original entry. I originally released it in 2009, and upgraded it last year. Here's the basic idea behind Verbatim:



The other online tool for remembering text is Memorize Now. The advantage of this tool is that you can keep multiple texts to memorize handy. Here's how Memorize Now works:



Before I continue with more apps, I suggest you watch one or both of the above videos, as they introduce concepts used in many memorization apps. Verbatim's approach of remembering lines in larger and larger groups is known as spiral learning. Note that both apps quiz you by removing information, and challenging you to fill it in. You can find more about spiral learning at the Memory Tools page.

The rest of the apps in this list are all iOS-specific native apps available from the App Store for various prices. They'll use the techniques I just described, and more.

Our first native app is Memorize Anything. With this app, you start by reading the piece out loud, and record it on your iOS device. It's recommended that longer pieces be broken up into separate sound files, each about 3 minutes or so. You then learn the piece simply by listening to it over and over.

When you're ready to test yourself on your chosen text, you have Memorize Anything play it back again, but this time with sound fading in and out at random spots. When you can fill in the muted portions over several plays, you know you've got the piece memorized!

Another app that uses sound, but in a different way, is Learn Anything, formerly released as Loop&Learn. In this one, you also record sound, but in smaller chunks, and you can optionally include graphics, which can be especially helpful if you design them as mnemonics. You then use a spiral learning approach, similar to Verbatim, but now with audio and video to help. Watch the video tutorial to get a better idea of how this app works:



Besides the paid version of the app, there's also a limited free trial version available.

The last three apps I'll discuss all work in a very similar manner. They all work with just the text, and allow you to progressively eliminate more and more of the text, so as to increasingly challenge your recall.

memoRISE is a free app, and will test you with just the first letters of words, or a fill-in-the-blank approach. You can think of this a simplified version of Verbatim 2 above, done as a native app.

Instead of memoRISE's either-or approach, there's Line Memory. This app allows you to use a slider to determine what percentage of the words are blanked out.

Our final app is Memorize Now. Like the Line Memory app, you can progressivly hide more and more words, but it uses a different approach. Instead of a slider, there are distinct buttons, which take you to different levels of missing text. In the earlier levels, the first letters remain, as other letters are removed. As you get to the higher levels, the first letters are replaced with black boxes.

Memorize Now, like the rest of these apps, can be used for memorizing texts like speeches, poems, and lyrics. If you have a particular use in mind, there are also dedicated versions of Memorize Now available that come pre-stocked with appropriate texts. These custom versions include Scripture Mastery Now!, Memorize Bible Verses, and Memorize Famous Poems.

Have you used any of these apps to memorize text? Perhaps you've used another app, iOS, Android, or otherwise, that I neglected to mention here. If so, I'd love to hear about the apps, and your experiences with them, in the comments!

Halloween is a little over a week away. To add to the fun, I have a little challenge for you!

Using my free Verbatim 2 app, try and memorize a Halloween poem by the time Halloween itself arrives!

This purpose of this challenge, of course, to help you learn both how to use the app, and to have a fun poem you can recite at your halloween gathering!

If you've never used the Verbatim app before, you'll definitely want to watch the instructional video (at the link above), as well as use a short poem.

What are some good short Halloween poems? Children's poet Kenn Nesbitt always has a good selection of poems at his site. Among the ones I suggest are Boney Mahoney, I'm Not Afraid of the Dark, Melvin the Mummy, or My Brother's Not a Werewolf (this last one is best recited by kids).

If you're up for a longer work, try I Cloned Myself on Friday Night, or Oh My Darling, Frankenstein (the fact that it's sung to Clementine helps). Here's a video of the latter being performed at a school presentation:



You might know the classic Halloween movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, but did you know that it was based on an original poem of the same name by Tim Burton? Christopher Lee gives an excellent reading of this poem here.

Of course, the most classic Halloween poem has to be Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. That classic is 108 lines long, so it may seem difficult to learn in less than a week. However, when I decided I was going to memorize this poem, it only took me 3 days to learn this, using the Verbatim 2 app.

Another good classic that's a challenge is The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service (click here to listen to the author read his poem). If you've never read this poem, take this opportunity to read or listen to it now.

Because the Verbatim 2 app requires text input, I've tried to include links to the text version of all the poems above. If you're not above doing a little transcribing while listening to a poem, there are also several good poem for Halloween in my Bizarre Poetry post.

Those are my suggestions, but don't let that stop you from exploring on your own. Do you have an favorite Halloween poems, especially ones you've memorized?

2 years ago, I released a free iPhone/iPod Touch web app called Verbatim, which was designed to help you memorize texts of any lengths word-for-word, such as monologues, poems, presentations, scripture, scripts, song lyrics, and speeches.

After hearing the feedback to the previous version, today I'm announcing the release of Verbatim 2.0! Yes, it's still free. Now it's easier than ever to use, and available for a wider array of mobile devices.

Verbatim was inspired by J. J. Hayes' post, How To Memorize A Poem. It's a brief article, but the I've found the technique to be very effective.

The most frequent complaint about the previous version was the requirement that a custom file had to be prepared and hosted remotely for it to work. In the new version, I've done away with that completely. Now, entering the piece is as simple as cutting and pasting.

The need to access the remote file also created a second obstacle, you had to have an online connection for it to work. Thanks to the new method of entering the text, as well as a few other programming techniqes, Verbatim 2 is completely self-contained and can now be used offline! It never needs to access any other files from anywhere, and only requires online access if you desire to visit the links in the manual.

The simplest way to use Verbatim offline is to download it from the above link, put it in your Dropbox account, sync up your mobile device's Dropbox app, and then run Verbatim in the app. I've only tried this myself in iOS devices, but it should work in a wide variety of mobile devices.

The following video will give you a more complete look at the updated version of Verbatim:



You can download an MPEG4 version of this video for offline viewing at: http://tinyurl.com/v2video

Verbatim was completely re-written in jQuery Mobile 1.0 beta 1, so that a wider array of mobile devices and desktops could run it. Many of the supported platforms are mentioned in the video tutorial above, and in the manual, with more detailed information available about supported platforms here.

If you're inspired to start memorizing a piece of text, there's plenty of good starting points in the related resources page of the manual. There's also many good poetry posts right here on Grey Matters. I've tried to cover different styles, from classic to modern to funny, and just downright bizarre.

I'd love to hear if Verbatim helps you, as well as answer any questions, problems, and suggestions in the comments.

Can you believe it? Today, Grey Matters is 6 years old! It's expanded, grown, and changed beyond even what I expected when I started it!

It's also Pi Day (3/14) and Albert Einstein's birthday, so let's celebrate in a geeky manner!

The best way to start? Check out all the Pi entries here on the blog, in the Mental Gym, and in the Video section. If you haven't guessed already, it's no coincidence that I started Grey Matters on Pi Day.

Even when going beyond this site, it's amazing where you can find Pi. As proof, take a look at the Mathematical Association of America's collection of Pi photos!

Even on Pi Day, we should consider the fact that Pi may be wrong. Here's Vi Hart to explain the advantages of Tau over Pi:



Futility Closet introduced me to Emma Rounds' “Plane Geometry”, a mathematical parody of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky in which Pi earns an honored place:

‘Twas Euclid, and the theorem pi
Did plane and solid in the text,
All parallel were the radii,
And the ang-gulls convex’d.

“Beware the Wentworth-Smith, my son,
And the Loci that vacillate;
Beware the Axiom, and shun
The faithless Postulate.”

He took his Waterman in hand;
Long time the proper proof he sought;
Then rested he by the XYZ
And sat awhile in thought.

And as in inverse thought he sat
A brilliant proof, in lines of flame,
All neat and trim, it came to him,
Tangenting as it came.

“AB, CD,” reflected he–
The Waterman went snicker-snack–
He Q.E.D.-ed, and, proud indeed,
He trapezoided back.

“And hast thou proved the 29th?
Come to my arms, my radius boy!
O good for you! O one point two!”
He rhombused in his joy.

‘Twas Euclid, and the theorem pi
Did plane and solid in the text;
All parallel were the radii,
And the ang-gulls convex’d.

I talk about poetry quite a bit, as well as magic. What happens when they're combined?

Once you've got the basics of memorizing poetry down, how do you make it magical?

Surprisingly, if the poem is perceived as challenging enough, just memorizing and reciting the poem can have its own magic. For example, Archie Campbell's recitation of Rindercella and the Pee Little Thrigs, and Saucy Sylvia's Ride Hooding Red are still remembered by many who saw them. All these amazingly-told stories are from the same source, a book called Stoopnagle's Tale Is Twisted.

Besides being amazing in and of itself, poetry can also be used to set the atmosphere for a magic show. A perfect example is Ricky Jay's use of the poem Villon’s Straight Tip to All Cross Coves to simultaneously establish an atmosphere of both con games and academic analysis:



You don't have to stop the show for poetry, though. When you think of this, however, you might think of only using it for a classic, even romantic atmosphere. Certainly, that can be done, such as when Alain Choquette performs his broken-and-restored thread routine. However, it can also be used for other purposes. Penn & Teller use the classic poem Casey At The Bat for not only comedy, but to provide excitement via a time limit for an escape:



Surprisingly, you can even make a magic square edgy through the use of poetry, as Benji Bruce proves:



What if we make the poem more central to the magic? Is there really such a thing as magic with poetry itself? Believe it or not, there is such a thing.

If you remember the discussion of James Grime's videos on the Kruskal Count, as shown as Last To Be Chosen and Last To Be Chosen II, you may remember the routines that used the Declaration of Independence and/or the Wizard of Oz opening paragraph. About 2 years ago, I discussed using the Kruskal Count for poetry tricks in more detail.

As with much of math-based magic, Martin Gardner was there first. Inspired a 1927 book by T. Page Wright, in which the 19th word of every poem was always “rose” and the 31st word was always “love”, he created his own original magic poems, both of which could employed a die to allow the performer to divine the word.

If you're a member of the Magic Cafe, and you have more than 50 posts, you have access to some of the most advanced poem-related magic in Leo Boudreau's routines Poems I and The Raven & The Beatle Decoded. In both of these routines, people choose words from a classic poem, and without any apparent clues, you're able to determined the chosen words.

If you have any experience with magic and poetry, I'd love to hear about it the comments!

It was just back in September when I explored memorizing poetry in detail. The question of what poems to memorize is always the biggest one. You can memorize classic poems, but today I'm going to focus on poems that are a bit more bizarre.

Where to start? How about with the basics, working through the alphabet A-Z. Normally, all you get is things like A is for Apple, B is for Ball, and so on. Sorry, that's too normal for this post! For a geeky turn on the alphabet, be sure to check out The Geek Alphabet from Geeks Are Sexy!

Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies goes beyond just being geeky. As shown in the animated version below, each letter represents a child who dies a grisly death:



Shel Silverstein's approach in Uncle Shelby's ABZ book is well known to many already, but if you're not familiar with it, there are several screen captures in this review that will give you an idea of what to expect.

The late Shel Silverstein is still probably the reigning king of fun and bizarre poetry. A quick look at the number of Shel Silverstein-related videos on YouTube will confirm that. He's hardly the only current poet to consider, however.

I've mentioned Kenn Nesbitt's poetry before on this blog, as he puts such a whimsical view in each of his poems, while still not being afraid to delve into the strange and even morbid side. My favorite poem of his is Katy Ate a Crate of Dates, a tongue twister that perfectly embodies his style. His most recent book of poetry is The Tighty Whitey Spider, but he does have a new storybook out entitled More Bears!.

Trace Beaulieu, whom you probably know best as Dr. Clayton Forrester from Mystery Science Theater 3000, has also recently released a book of original poetry in his own bizarre style, entitled Silly Rhymes For Belligerent Children. Last summer, Trace read some of excerpted poems (Winkle Tinkle is my favorite):





Let's not forget parody. Just this morning, the good people over at mental_floss introduced me to Dylan Curry and one his creations, Humpty Dumpty in the style of Edgar Allan Poe.

Who better than to turn to for parody poems than Frank Jacobs, who has been parodying poems and song lyrics for MAD Magazine for over 50 years! In his book Pitiless Parodies and Other Outrageous Verse, there's whole chapters devoted to his parodies of Mother Goose, The Raven, and Casey at the Bat, including one called Casey At The Dice. Longtime MAD readers will probably find many familiar works in his MAD For Better or Verse collection. His Hollywood Jabberwocky, a reworking of Lewis Carroll's classic poem with movie stars, is both amusing and amazing:



As with any collection of poetry, I can only begin to scratch the surface of the amazing, silly, and bizarre poetry that's out there. However, if I've captured your imagination, and you're now looking for a good place to begin exploring on your own, check out the poems category over at Futility Closet.

What are your favorite bizarre poems? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

Almost all the posts on here since October have focused on mathematics. Perhaps it's time to get back to memory work.

Let's wade back into memory work with some mnemonics.

I've certainly talked enough about memorizing Pi, but what about memorizing the constant e? Robert Talbert teaches a different mnemonic approach that helps you memorize e simply by looking at a US$20 bill! Since I believe that memorization and understanding go hand-in-hand, understanding the nature of e is a big help. Also, knowing your US presidents will help here, strangely.

Speaking of memorizing USA facts, The Tutor Whisperer has some great and original mnemonics for learning the US states and their locations. The example only teaches from the Pacific coast states to the midwest states, but it wouldn't be hard to create similar mnemonics for the rest of the states.

Perhaps you only need to memorize the original 13 colonies? Then perhaps Venus, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto can help! No, you don't need to read your horoscope, just use this stately astro-mnemonic. This mnemonic will probably take more work than the others in this post, but it sure is handy!

As long as we're talking about outer space now, how do you go about remembering something like the speed of light? In miles per second, 186,000 isn't tough to remember, but what about in meters per second? Can we guarantee certainty, clearly referring to this light mnemonic? Not only can we, you just learned it without knowing that you did!

Ready-made mnemonics are great, but what about when there are no ready-made mnemonics for what you're studying? One solution for creating custom mnemonics I've mentioned before is JogLab. They've just made their site even more useful with a special introductory video about creating acrostic poems (It employs annotation links, so I'm not embedding it here).

Finally, those who use the Number Shape system of memory will find the following video handy. I've seen several variations of images for use with this system, but this video teaches the most distinct and easily-remembered images I've ever run across:

Halloween is just around the corner, so it's time for a little spooky fun, math geek style!

Here's a quick math joke to get us going: Why do mathematicians always confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because Oct 31 = Dec 25!

Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem, The Raven, has been a long-time Halloween favorite. It's very enjoyable, but what happens when you give it a mathematical twist?

Back in 1995, Mike Keith wondered what you would get if you crossed Poe with Pi. The result is his amazing work, Poe, E., Near a Raven. Here are the first two stanzas:

Poe, E.
Near a Raven

Midnights so dreary, tired and weary.
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
"This", I whispered quietly, "I ignore".

Perfectly, the intellect remembers: the ghostly fires, a glittering ember.
Inflamed by lightning's outbursts, windows cast penumbras upon this floor.
Sorrowful, as one mistreated, unhappy thoughts I heeded:
That inimitable lesson in elegance - Lenore -
Is delighting, exciting...nevermore.

Regular readers know I like to memorize poetry. I'd like to discuss memorizing poetry in more detail than I have in the past.

Why?

As regular Grey Matters readers know, I'm a great supporter of going back to the classics. Therefore, this month's snippets theme is getting back to the classics!

The importance of learning any kind of classical knowledge is summed up by TJIC's law: "A sufficiently large lookup table is worth 10 IQ points."

• I recently ran across a series of books, from the late 19th to early 20th century, on Project Gutenberg which focus on classical knowledge. The series is called Every Child Should Know, and each book focuses on a particular area of knowledge, such as poetry, myths, artwork, and more.

Since this is part of Project Gutenberg, you can access these on iOS devices, Kindle, Nook, and most other ebook readers.

Also available as part of this series are the MP3 version of Poems Every Child Should Know, and an improved PDF version of Pictures Every Child Should Know, which fixes a few errors, including rotated and missing pictures.

• I've set up a few YouTube playlists containing some classical knowledge. 6 of them contain poetry, and the last contains classical music. The YouTube playlists are:
– Classic poems
– Poems from UBS ads
– Poems by Nipsey Russell
– Modern poems
– Poems from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
– Poems from Martin Gardner's Best Remembered Poems
– Classical Music You Didn't Know You Knew

• Assuming you understand a classic idea properly, there's nothing wrong with modernizing it to regain interest in the idea. For example, one classic number mind-reading feat was updated with lottery tickets to create Powerball 60. Another classic approach in mind-reading magic was adapted for use on the iPhone and iPod Touch to create iForce.

Even better, these 2 ideas were combined to create an unusually powerful mind-reading feat. If you like that idea, check out this nice addition that takes it to the next level.

• As noted in the links below, I've talked about fairy tales, but a look through the aforementioned Every Child Should Know series reminded me that tall tales are just as valuable. Great sources for tall tales include:
– John Henry: James Earl Jones reads Ezra Jack Keats' book (audio only), Disney's American Legends (YouTube: Part I, Part II)
– Johnny Appleseed: Disney's American Legends (YouTube: Part I, Part II)
– Paul Bunyan: HTML book version, Paul Bunyan Swings His Axe (Google books), Disney's 1958 Paul Bunyan movie (YouTube: Part I, Part II)
– Pecos Bill: Disney's American Heroes (YouTube: Part I, Part II, Part III)
– Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends series

• Looking for more in the way of classics? Look no further than here on Grey Matters! Check out the posts on:
– Chemical elements
– Computer principles, without the use of a computer!
– Fairy tales
– History, James Burke style
– Language learning
– Poetry
– Study tips
– US Constitutional amendments (Part I, Part II, Part III)
– US States, including the following year's update
– More fun, free, and nostalgic learning resources.

Most methods of memorizing a stack, as a quick look through the Memorized Deck Online Toolbox will show, require intermediary mnemonics. Here's an approach I've been developing that uses no mnemonics!

This method is based on the spiral learning approach used in J. J. Hayes' approach to memorizing poetry, but modified for the needs of stack memorization.

1) Create a written list of your stack, containing both position (1 to 52) and card information. If you're using the Tamariz stack, you'd list 1-4C, 2-2H, 3-7D, and so on. Important: When making the list, add the cards and positions from 1 through 4 at the bottom, too. This is because many memorized deck tricks often require you think of the top card as being “after” the bottom card.

2) Look at the first card, and read it out loud. I usually say the position then the card, then the position again, such as “1, Four of Clubs, 1”. The cover it up the card, and repeat it from memory in the same way. If you made a mistake, look at the card and state it out loud again, then cover it up and try repeating it from memory. If you got the card correct, move to the next card and repeat this process. Do this for each card and position 1-52.

3) Next, you're going to repeat this process from the beginning of the stack, but two cards at a time. Start by reading positions 1 and 2 out loud from your list, such as “1, Four of Clubs, 1, 2, Two of Hearts, 2”, covering them up and repeating them from memory. Again, if you make a mistake, repeat with the same cards, and if you didn't make a mistake, move on to the next 2 card. Go through the whole deck. Don't forget to go beyond the cards at positions 51 and 52 by finishing with positions 1 and 2.

4-7) Go through the whole process again, but 3 cards at a time (finishing with positions 52, 1 and 2 as the last triplet), then 4 cards at a time (finishing with positions 49, 50, 51 and 52, then 1, 2, 3, and 4), then 5 cards at a time (finishing with positions 51, 52, 1, 2, and 3 as the last set), and finally 6 cards at a time (finishing with positions 49, 50, 51, 52, 1, and 2 as the last set).

8) Just before you go to bed at night, try and recall the entire stack by position and card.

9) As mentioned by J. J. Hayes, sleep on it! Sleeping will give your brain a chance to effectively “download” the memorized stack into long-term memory.

Once you can go through the stack 6 cards at a time, you'll be surprised how well you have the cards and their positions memorized. What this approach does is both emphasize the exact information you need to know, as well as strongly making the associations of each card by creating, breaking, then remaking associations of cards with each other. Also, you should never have to work through any external associations for the positions and cards. One should automatically bring up the other.

At this point, though, you're only half done. As Dennis Loomis points out in his Memorized Deck Mastery article, you should not only know the cards and their positions, but also what cards come before and after each other.

To achieve this, you're going to repeat the above process, but without the card positions. Just as before, you'll make a list of cards, remembering to include the top 4 cards at the bottom of the list, as well. You'll then go through 1 card at a time, and continue until you've gone through the whole process 6 cards at a time, reaclling the stack just before bed, and then sleeping on it.

Once you've gone through both of these processes, you'll not only be able to go through the whole deck from memory, but you also won't need to recall any mnemonics. From this point on, regular review and testing is really all you should need. Tools that aid in spiral learning, such as Loop&Learn and/or Verbatim, can help with both the initial learning and the regular review.

This approach is a great way to memorize any large set of information that you have to know perfectly. Besides things like card stacks and poems, you could learn any detailed list this way. For example, the Knight's Tour path taught in The Chrysalis of a Polymath could also be learned this way. Just as with the cards above, you'd make sure to include the first few positions again at the end of the list, since the cyclic nature is important here, too.

If you try this approach out, I'd love to hear your comments about it! Did it work better or worse for you than other methods? What other uses did you come up with?

This isn't today's full blog post. It's more of a quick note about an upcoming release that Grey Matters will be interested in. Another full post is coming later today.

L&L Publishing is offering a special pre-release price on their upcoming Barrie Richardson DVDs!

Barrie Richardson's two major works, Theatre of the Mind and Act Two, are already regarded as vital works in magic, mentalism and presentation.

Grey Matters readers already know of them because of not only the amazing math and memory feats contained within them, but also the skill and ingenuity in developing presentations that make an audience respond.

The contents of the DVDs are listed here, and you'll note that Volume 3 is called MENTAL AEROBICS: MEMORY AND METAPHOR. Yep - it's chock full of the kind of stuff we here at Grey Matters enjoy, like magic squares and memory feats.

Below is a video excerpt of Barrie performing Dollar Divination and Thoughts With Wings. Before you view it it, thought, I recommend reading the excellent post New Barrie Richardson DVDs: Pre-Review over at Mentalism Magazine, as it explains some very important points about the whole point of the DVDs.

(UPDATE - July 14, 2011: Verbatim has been updated and improved. Click here to learn about the update!)

Many of you know that I've been working on converting my Verbatim web app (What is a web app?) to a native app (The kind you download from the iTunes App Store). However, a new app has just been released that blows Verbatim out of the water!

It's called Loop&Learn (iTunes Link), and it's so new, I couldn't have included it in Thursday's iPhone post, because it wasn't available yet!

The focus of Verbatim is the poem memorization approach I first learned in J. J. Hayes' article, in which you memorize a poem (or monologues, presentations, scripture, scripts, song lyrics, speeches, etc.) by learning the lines in larger and larger groups each time you go through it. Loop&Learn is the first program I've run across that allows you to use this same approach for learning.

Had the Loop&Learn app just stopped there, I might just think of it as competition for Verbatim. However, I haven't even begun to scratch the surface! Much like Verbatim, you start by entering the text of what you want to remember. Besides things like poems and speeches, this could also be any sort of list, such as presidents, elements, and so on.

Here's where the differences begin. After giving each “loop” some basic information, such as title, tags, and description, you record a snippet of sound for each item on the list (determined by where the RETURNs and/or line ends are in the text you entered earlier). If you're running Loop&Learn on an iPod Touch, you'll need to purchase an external microphone (preferably ones with built-in earphones) to make us of this app. The sounds will be played back as you go through your loop later.

Optionally, you can also include graphics to go with each sound snippet. This is a very handy feature, as it not only allows you to have pictures of the things you're memorizing, but can also be used to depict mnemonic associations to further strengthen your ability to remember the contents of the loop!

When you play back your loop, the most basic way is to play the whole thing straight through. However, you can also play back individual segments individually, or in groups. You can also choose to either have it play the segments as if you're repeating them along with the app, or to pause, so you can repeat after the app. The ability to play segments in groups and to have a listen-and-repeat mode makes Loop&Learn perfect for the approach in the J. J. Hayes' article I mentioned earlier.

Already, this is an extraordinary app, but there's one other feature that's very important: it's social networking features! Once you've developed your own loops, you can upload them to the Loop&Learn library to share with others, and download loops developed by others, too. In addition, you can rate each loop, and announce loops via Twitter and e-mail., all within the app itself!

Below is a video to give you a better idea of the look, feel, and capabilities of Loop&Learn. You can find more about Loop&Learn in their Video Tour page and their YouTube channel.


Getting back to the Verbatim comparison, Verbatim does have a way of reviewing items that Loop&Learn doesn't offer. In Verbatim, you can review your pieces getting hints by either filling in blanks or seeing only the first letter. If you enjoy this feature, and would like to see it in a native app, iByMemory (iTunes Link) offers this functionality, and would make a good companion app.

If you go into Verbatim itself, click on Manual, then on Related resources, you'll find a whole host of resources that are useful for not only Verbatim, but Loop&Learn and iByMemory, as well!

All in all, I find Loop&Learn to be an incredible value, and highly recommend this app, especially because of the incredible multimedia and social features. It's easy to develop, and fun and effective to use.

On a related note, I've stopped development on a native app version of Verbatim. The Verbatim web app will remain available, but I am now free to pursue other native app projects that have been put off until now.

It's time for April snippets!

• I've talked about memorizing poetry and also talked about memorizing the elements. Now you can use the two concepts to reinforce each other, using the Poetic Table of the Elements! Simply click on any element's symbol or number on the chart (or the element name along the left side), and you'll be taken to poem by everyone from classic poets to original poems submitted by readers. This is a great way to make both learning poetry and the elements fun!

• Remembering long works like poetry is one thing, and presenting it is quite another. FInancial Times gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Malcom Gladwell's secrets for successful presentation (Gladwell's work inspired the book Made To Stick). You also might enjoy this look at Steve Jobs' presentation secrets.

• Back in 2008, I covered some good memory-related articles from Google Books here and here. I've found a few more since then:

They are Idiot Savants. Wizards of the Calendar: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Man with a Photographic Memory: Part 1

Improve Your Memory: Part 1

Electric Teacher Helps Memorize: Part 1

Tricks to Keep Under Your Hat: Part 1

Reading With Your Fingertips: Part 1

• In Calculators: Past, Present and Future, I took a look at the different device people have used to calculate. There's an even more detailed look at past calculation devices over at RetroCalculators.com. I especially like Mr. Smart The Educated Monkey Calculator!

• We'll wind up with this look at Mental Floss readers' favorite mnemonics. Most of them are in the comments. Mnemonics for biological classification seem to be unusually popular.