Learning Hack of the Day: Pegging Lists

What do the Lone Ranger, The Three Stooges and Mary Poppins have to do with learning faster, easier, better? Read on.

Numbers are best memorized by using associations. There are numerous (no pun intended) ways for creating a numbers pegging list. You could do it by sound.

1 is a bun

2 is a shoe

3 is a bee

4 is a door

5 is dive

6 is a trick

7 is a heaven

8 is a skate

9 is a sign

shape

1 is a tree;

2 is a swan

3 is Mickey Mouse ears (rotated )

4 is a sailboat

5 is a sea horse

6 is a is a musical note

7 is a gold club

8 is a pair of eye glasses (ratated)

9 is a balloon.

There are other methods. My favorite is by association.

1 is the Lone Ranger

2 is dancers

3 is the Three Stooges.

4 is The Beatles

5 is the Dave Clark Five

6 is Number Six from “Battlestar Galactica” actress Tricia Helfer

7 is “The Magnificent Seven” or just one actor from the series. I use Yule Brenner

8 is Dick Van Patton (“Eight Is Enough”)

9 is a Muse

I don't have to stop at nine. I could continue

10 is the British Prime Minister who lives at Number 10 Downing Street or a ten gallon hat.

11 is George Clooney (“Oceans 11')

12 is Brad Pitt (“Twelve Monkeys)

13 Huck Finn who was 13 years old in the book.

14 Woodrow Wilson for his 14 Points or William Shakespeare for his 14 line sonnets.

15 Bart Starr, Green Bay Packer Hall of Famer who was number 15 Use any sports star you wish.

16 a teen age girl who is blowing out the 16 candles on her birthday cake.

17 Mary Poppins who worked at 17 Cherry Tree Lane.

18 a truck driver

19 a golfer

20 Abe Lincoln (a score is 20 years.)

It is not enough to memorize a pegging list; think briefly about the associations and peg them in your mind.When you need a longer number. Put images in your mind and chain them together.

To memorize pi (3.1415926535), I might think about the three Stooges (3) who are goofing around when along comes William Shakespeare (14) who wants to write a sonnet about the Three Stooges. Imagine these men interacting for awhile. Along comes Bart Starr or any foot ball player (15) who wants to show off tossing the ball or kicking field goals. But his muse (9) is holding him back. She is wearing a red gown and a gold chain and she is struggling to keep Bart Starr from playing football. She says he should be writing his memoirs. Shop Amazon - Valentine's Day Savings - Fire HD 6 Tablet Shop Amazon - Textbook Trade-In - Get Up to 80% Back

Pegging Using Numbers

Pegging using loci or location has been a popular memorization method since ancient times when Roman senators used Loci to memorize speeches that sometimes lasted for several hours. Ancient orators did not carry notes with them.

But using loci rooms is not the only way of pegging. Many people use lists. As I wrote earlier when I introduced pegging this list might be the alphabet or any list already memorized like the nine planets or the 44 presidents of the United States.

The only requirement is order and numbers. The alphabet has its own order and the presidents would most likely be in chronological order.

Both those lists are abstract. We made the alphabet more concrete by creating fun alphabets like my list of popular singers. There are many ways of making the alphabet more concrete. Just associate each letter with an item that can be experienced with the senses.

“A” might be applesauce , an ape or astronaut. “B” might be a battlestar, bumble bee or a banana. “C” might be a calico cat, cow or a candelabra. It is best to come up with your own associations.

Some people knowing they have to number the items use numbers. They might use soundalikes like: one is a sun; two is a school; three is a bee; four is store; five is dive off a high platform; six is a stick; seven is heaven; eight is a skate; nine is crime’ ten is a wren.

Others use associations that look like the numbers. One is a pencil or a tree; two is a swan; three is an Alfred Hitchcock profile; four is a sail boat; five is a bike; six is an elephant trunk; seven is a boomerang; eight is a snowman; nine is a balloon; ten is a bat and ball.

You can also associate the numbers with concrete items and make popular associates for dozens of numbers. For instance here is a numbers pegging list that I created.

Geoge Washington. He is on the one dollar bill and he was the first president

Dancers. There are usually two.

The Three Stooges, or musketeers

The Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo

A tape recorder. In the old “Mission Impossible” television series, the tape would self destruct in five seconds.

Actress Tricia Helfer who played Number Six in “Battlestar Galactica.”

Seven Up.

A skate. Skaters do figure eights.

A reindeer. Santa has nine of them.

Cowboy hat. It is a ten gallon hat.

George Clooney who starred in the film “Oceans Eleven.”

Monkeys. Think of the film, “Twelve Monkeys.”

Huckleberry Finn who was thirteen years old in the novel.

Shakespeare. A sonnet has fourteen lines.

Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in World War II won 15 medals.

Candles. Jimmy Clanton sang “Sixteen candles make a lovely glow.”

Mary Poppins, who worked for the Banks family at 17 Cherry Tree Lane.

A semi truck is an eighteen wheeler.

Gold clubs. The 19th hole is the watering hole.

Eye glasses. Perhaps you have 20/20 vision.

A wine glass. At age 21, we can drink.

A rifle. Some rifles are 22’s.

The Bible with its well-known 23 rd psalm.

Keifer Sutherland, the actor who starred in the series “24.”

Buck Rogers who'd who lived in the 25th century.

A Texas or Arizona Ranger. A very old television western about the Arizona Rangers was called “26 Men.”

Dresses after the film “27 Dresses.”

A television set. Remember the old 28 inch screens.

An airplane. The B 29 won World War II.

A hippy who would not trust anyone over 30.

An ice cream cone. A popular brand has 31 flavors.

A comic book which usually has 32 pages.

Frank Sinatra who make many 33 1/3 RPM records

A Matador. Thirty-Four is the area code for Spain.

A camera (35 Millimeter).

There’s more to it, which can be obtained from emailing me and asking for Mary Ann’s pegging list. You may make any changes that make sense to you.

More Loci

More Loci

by Mary Ann Slavcheff


In an earlier blog, I wrote about organizing items into lists using location, numbering them and attaching them to things already learned.
I often use my laundry room even though I have added other rooms over the years. When using Loci, start with one room. 
The  items in my laundry room are, 1. doorway, 2. litter pan, 3. window, 4. Dryer, 5. wall cabinets, 6. mops, 7. furnace, 8. washing machine, 9. hot water heater, 10 sink. Say I want to memorize a list of the southern states in the order in which they seceded. (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee.)
Here is how I will use Loci to memorize the  names of the states in order of secession.  You may, of course,  use other images if those will work better for you.
I see Caroline Kennedy standing in the doorway of my laundry room speaking in a strong Souther accent. (South Carolina)
I see a Mississippi river boat  sitting in my cat’s litter pan. (Mississippi)
I look out the window and there are flowers blooming everywhere in my back yard. I  pink roses, purple  lilacs and yellow dandelions.  (Florida)
I look in my dryer. Ali MacGraw and Bambi are in there. (Alabama)
Next I open the wall cabinets above my dryer. George W. Bush is dressed as a confederate general and he is leading a cavalry charge. (Georgia)
Below this are my pail of mops. My Uncle Louis is  holding a mop that perhaps he might use as a weapon in the war. With him is actress Anna Paquin who is also holding a mop.  Louis plus Anna. (Louisiana) 
I look at the furnace and there is my tax statement for last year. I must have forgotten to mail it.  (Texas)
Virginia Graham swims in my washing machine. (Virginia)
On top of my water heater is an ark and a chain saw. (Arkansas)
Caroline Kennedy is now by my sink. She keeps saying “No” to let me know that she has lost her accent. (North Carolina)
Backing away from Caroline, I bump into Tennessee Ernie Ford, who is standing in a waste paper basket.(Tennessee)
An easy technique if I have ten items in the room and eleven items to memorize, is to add either a person, an animal  or a wastepaper basket to the room. (Eleven states seceded, so I had to put Tennessee Ernie in the wastepaper basket.
Those states will now be easer to remember. I have given them order and numbers. I associated them in fun ways with locations I had already memorized.
Loci is an ancient method, but fun for modern scholars. See my earlier blog on Loci. For longer lists, I use more than one room.  Kevin Vost has one of the best explanations of Loci in his book, “Memorize the Faith.”  He has a ten commandments room, a seven deadly sins room, a seven virtues room and even a cathedral. 
Readers do not have to be Catholic to use his rooms or for Vost to  help them with Loci. His rooms work for memorizing anything and I often use his ten commandments room. 
I like to work in multitudes of ten, so I added items to some of Vost’s other rooms when they had less than ten items.  
I also have a Loci car which I copied from “O.W.” Bill Hayes’ book “Your Memory.” This last book is a 1958 edition that has been out of print for years. It is still available  at online bookstores and at rare book stores.  There are 20 items on the Loci car.
I also have a Woodward Avenue list that I created.  Woodward is main street in Detroit and runs through several Detroit suburbs. A few of the businesses I slotted onto my Woodward Loci have gone, but I remember them where they were.  There are thirty items on my Woodward Avenue List going south and  twenty-six items going north.
Many people find Loci even easier to use than fun alphabets.
I shall close this column with the loci person. We will come back to this Loci person later and see how it can help us learn code and memorize even very long numbers.
Because this list is more than just Loci, when you memorize it, please use the exact words given. Don’t change toes to foot or muscle to leg.  Also leave the numbers as they are. Zero does not follow nine, but this will make sense later when we learn this as master code. 

1. Toes, 2. knee, 3. muscle, 4. rear, 5. love handles, 6. shoulder, 7 collar, 8. face.9.pate, 0. ceiling

Your assignment is to create some Loci rooms on your own. Draw a floor plan; below that number and name each item.  You may use my laundry room or any of Vost’s rooms. I will print print Hayes’  Loci car list in a future column.
Also memorize the Loci person, we will be using that as we learn other learning techniques.

SMART TIME MANAGEMENT AND THE ALPHABET AS A PEGGING LIST

BY MARY ANN SLAVCHEFF

       Today as I walked my dog Tiki, I decided to try something different. Instead of memorizing the license plates numbers in order as I sometimes do,  I reviewed the NATO alphabet.  

I had never put a lot of effort into memorizing this alphabet and I had not thought of it for some time. But it was time for a review; I looked at the letters on a license plate and converted them to Nato words. 

For those not familiar with the NATO alphabet it is an international phonetic  alphabet. When someone in the armed forces or a police officer wants to spell out say a license plate he does it with:

Alpha, Brava, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Limo, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu

So a  license plate with the letters MAS (my initials) would read: Mike Alpha Sierra.

As I walked and reviewed, I was doing several things correctly as a learner. Time spent walking a dog or doing any mindless task like dish washing or driving a familiar route or folding laundry can also be spent testing ourselves on our knowledge.  I was using my time smartly. 

Using time for two compatible projects is called layering. It is different from multitasking which does not work because with multitasking, focus is difficult to impossible.  I can’t, for instance, give  a caller directions to my home, look up a pasta recipe  and balance my checkbook all at the same time. Each activity needs focus and they are being short changed.

What else was I doing right as a learner as Tiki and I walked? I was Pegging. One of the reasons the NATO alphabet was easy for me to memorize because it it an alphabet.  I already had the order down.  I just had to learn a list of associations.

Associating new learning with something already learned like the alphabet is called Pegging.   It has many forms, but let’s take one of its more basic forms which is a simple list like the alphabet. 

If the alphabet sounds too simplistic for those of us beyond kindergarten, then make it fun.  Create fun alphabets  or use one already created like the NATO alphabet. 

Okay, so the NATO alphabet isn’t fun.  What is a fun alphabet anyway?

I grew up in the 1950’s and early 60’s and like a lot of adolescents and teens, I loved certain recording artists. I bought their records and put the long playing records  in alphabetical order according to the singer’s name. To this day I remember that order.

Paul Anka, Pat Boone, Chubby Checker, Bobby Darin, Everly Brothers, Fabian, Leslie Gore, Johnny Horton, Burl Ives, Stonewall Jackson, Kingston Trio, Brenda Lee, Johnny Maestro, Rick Nelson, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Que Sara Sara,  Bobby Rydell, Neil Sedaka, Johnny Tillotson, Leslie Uggams, Bobby Vinton, Andy Williams, X-Ray , Kathy Young and Zippidy Doo Dah.

Note that where I did not have a singers name I made a substitute, songs for Q and Z and then the reliable X-Ray for X.  I also selected only one singer for each letter of the alphabet.  Having too many names could confuse me.

This list was easy to learn by just imagining my record collection. Later when I had a nice collection of DVD’s I could do the same thing with titles.

I have an actors list too.  Alan Alda, Dan Blocker, Jack Cassidy, Johnny Depp, etc. We could also create lists of sports stars, fictional character, words associated with a hobby or historic period.  We can create dozens of alphabets. I suggest working with just one fun alphabet until you get more practice.

You might get stuck on some letters like I did with my singers.  For those words that start with difficult letters have something that can be unrelated nonsense ready to plug in.

X = Xena, the Warrior Princess; Xanth, a fantasy land created by author Piers Anthony;  X Men, X Box or Xmas.  Z could stand for Zorro, Zipper, Zip codes, Zoey  or Zippidy Do Dah

If you get stuck too often  often enlarge your topic. Instead of names of boats, have transportation as your main category. Then you can include cars and even airplanes. When you get to “Q” you have the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth both legendary ships, or you can also choose an aircraft type for which there are designation codes for most letters of the alphabet. 

What a great excuse for memorizing aircraft designations. It is now a fun alphabet.

The alphabet can be a great learning tool. Too bad it is often dismissed as too simplistic.  It has an easy order and it has already been learned; it is easy to tack new information onto it.

Create your own special alphabet, use the NATO  alphabet, or my list of singers circa 1960.  Now we all have at least one pegging list. In my next blog, I will show you how to use a pegging list.  Over the next several weeks, we will create other pegging lists. 

Pegging lists are as simple as ABC. The alphabet is not the only type of pegging lists. There is even a simpler method of pegging.  We will learn that too.

Then we will learn another technique.