Pranav Sreejayan Week 15: Sky's the limit
Sky's the limit
Memory is one place where God did not create all men equal (that and socio-economic classes, but that's a discussion for another time). Personally, I have a terrible memory. My remembering thing comes at mostly a conceptual level, so remembering how kinematics works in physics is an easier thing to remember than what I had for breakfast today. But that’s not the same for everyone, and some people blur the line between conceptual and real by using different techniques for remembering. Some people have pulled off insane feats of remembering things and reading about them alone makes me green with envy due to my inability to remember how old I am if asked suddenly. For some people, called savants, they are often born this way and have astounding powers such as an ability to remember things such as details from visually complex scenes. Some people aren’t even born this way. There are cases of people being injured and suddenly gaining these abilities and it is called acquired savant syndrome. However, you don’t need to get run over to have a good memory and people have proven it. The current world record for remembering digits of pi is around 68000 digits, and it is held by Chao Lu, who was a graduate student in China at the time. People have achieved various astounding feats like memorizing a deck of cards in a minute or being able to compute what day a date that occurred decades ago was. The secret is simply practice. Using techniques like the mind palace and such, people such as Nelson Dellis have gone from taking hours to memorize decks of cards, to mere minutes.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/on-the-possible-shapes-of-the-brain
Hey Pranav! I personally would say my memory sucks! If anybody asks me to memorize definitions, I am definitely going to struggle. However, some methods that work great for me include understanding the concepts behind the definitions by associating that definition with an event or specific example. It is funny how everyone uses different methods or mechanisms to retain information and support their memory. I have a lot of friends who can retain tons of information in just a few minutes and while this seems intimidating, it's important to understand that we all work in different ways. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Pranav, having a good memory sounds really convenient. For me, I don't have too much trouble remembering formulas or concepts I learned during school (at least for two weeks or so), but I often have no recollection of something happening on a family trip a couple of years ago. My family will be talking about some funny story that happened and I would have no memory of it at all. It kind of sucks because it's as if my memory only holds up to like one week's worth of events and forgets anything unimportant before that. I have never heard of savant syndrome, but it sounds interesting and I'll probably look into it a bit when I have some free time.
ReplyDeletePranav, what an insightful post to read about. When you said that you are someone who remembers kinematics equations in physics compared to your breakfast, I would have to say that I am the exact opposite. I, like you, also get very jealous when around people who can easily understand concepts and remember them. It makes us feel we should not be judged on the same level and each person should be judged differently however that is not the case. Reading about the “exponential storage” of the brain and how much our brain can store was very surprising to me because I could never imagine myself remembering 2000 years of MP3 songs in my brain. This was definitely fascinating to read about.
ReplyDeleteHey Pranav, it is fascinating how much memory the brain can hold. I would say I have a good memory but only when it comes to certain things, mainly just the things that I find interesting. For example, I have a hard time memorizing math equations, but I can effortlessly remember song lyrics without even listening to it a lot. If only the good memory I have for song lyrics or remembering trivial information can be used for studying, life would be so much more convenient. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Pranav! It is seriously fascinating to think that our brains are capable of so much. I wouldn't say I have an absolutely horrible memory, as I can do fairly well when it comes to subjects that require straight up memorization, but I do tend to space out a lot and sometimes forget things right after people tell me them. Things would be so much easier if we all just had excellent memories. The fact that the brain has so much exponential storage has made me realize that we probably do not really utilize our brains to the fullest.
ReplyDeleteHi Pranav, I was fascinated to learn from your blog that the record for the digits of pi memorized is 68,000! It made me feel slightly pathetic for not being able to remember the birthdays of my friends and relatives which is something my aunt shames me about. On another note, I am quite curious about how scientists are able to calculate how much memory or information one can hold. Does it vary for age group, ethnicity, or gender? Hopefully these questions will be answered in the future. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Pranav! I found your blog this week to be super interesting as you explored so many cool topics. I definitely agree with you that people are not equal when it comes to memory abilities. I have the worst memory and often forget what I am trying to say to someone mid-sentence. I think it is very intriguing how the brain can store so much information. I always thought that in order to remember new things, I have to forget old things to make room for it. I will definitely keep training my memory in order to improve my ability to remember important information. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHey Pranav, the power of the human brain is really vast and (as of now) impossible to understand by even today's modern scientists. I cannot fathom how someone can memorize tens of thousands of seemingly random numerical values; I cannot even name that much numbers in one sitting. That is a really interesting fact to learn about, and facts like those are what truly demonstrates the power our brain holds. Thank you for your interesting blog.
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