Survey: How good is your 'page memory'?
Jorn Barger
ease of doing searches for a given word, phrase, or
even a substring within a word. As you're reading
a book on paper, if you feel the need to recheck a
passage you remember seeing dozens or hundreds of
pages earlier, this can be almost impossible to find.
But there's a compensatory saving-grace, I find,
that usually my inner eye can recall fairly
accurately _where on the double-page spread_ the
item I want had fallen-- upper left to lower
right-- so the search process just involves
checking each two-page spread in this spot.
But I wonder is this sort of memory common, and
commonly reliable?
--
Optimal info-density: logarithmic timeline of the universe
http://www.robotwisdom.com/science/logarithmic.html
Ron Hardin
to be able to remember them.
--
Ron Hardin
rhha...@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
Jorn Barger
news:<3F79AA...@mindspring.com>...
> Cicero (I think) talks of associating speech topics with rooms, so as
> to be able to remember them.
Ask Silke-- she never lies and she's always right:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/issues/topos.html
--
"There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
--The Register
Robot Wisdom Weblog: http://www.robotwisdom.com/
francis muir
<rhha...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Cicero (I think) talks of associating speech topics with rooms, so as
> to be able to remember them.
Do we, in this Year of Grace, call him Kickero or Sissero?
Neither is very attractive.
David E. Latane
If you go looking for an answer, begin by shouting "Tully-ho!"
D. Latane
Don Tuite
>One of the great advantages of online etexts is the
>ease of doing searches for a given word, phrase, or
>even a substring within a word. As you're reading
>a book on paper, if you feel the need to recheck a
>passage you remember seeing dozens or hundreds of
>pages earlier, this can be almost impossible to find.
>
>But there's a compensatory saving-grace, I find,
>that usually my inner eye can recall fairly
>accurately _where on the double-page spread_ the
>item I want had fallen-- upper left to lower
>right-- so the search process just involves
>checking each two-page spread in this spot.
>
>But I wonder is this sort of memory common, and
>commonly reliable?
A sample of one: Yes, my memory works that way.
Hardin's reply conjures up _The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci_
(Jonathan D. Spence)
Don
francis muir
B. Miller" <jbmi...@world.std.com> wrote:
> On 9/30/03 11:25 AM, "Jorn Barger" <jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
>
>> Ron Hardin <rhha...@mindspring.com> wrote in msg
>> news:<3F79AA...@mindspring.com>...
>>> Cicero (I think) talks of associating speech topics with rooms, so as
>>> to be able to remember them.
>>
>> Ask Silke-- she never lies and she's always right:
>> http://www.robotwisdom.com/issues/topos.html
>>
>
> My God, was that a year ago? I used to remember where on the page I'd seen
> something -- used to get away with not making notes because I could
> half-remember what the layout of the page had been, school textbooks with
> lots of illustrations and set-in boxes being very helpful for this, and
> working back to what I remembered reading when I'd seen that layout -- but I
> find this is often misleading now. Sometimes I'm certain I remember what
> side of the page something was on, and _eventually_ I discover I'm wrong.
> But I remember that I went to the supermarket either right before or right
> after I posted to that thread.
But you do agree that you're not on the same page
as he who wishes us to Keep Well.
OFurorHortensis
>But I wonder is this sort of memory common, and commonly reliable?
I've got it, and I do rely on it, as appropriate. On occasion I've been able to
visualize the actual passage in question.
The clearest instance of this occurred while taking an undergrad exam. The
teacher seized upon an inconsequential scrap from an anecdotal aside by an
author, posing a grade breaker question thereon.
I'd done the work, but I'd also recognized the inconsequential bit as
inconsequential and dismissed it after first reading.
Pissed off, I sat there in the exam, and visualized sitting in my chair with
cuppa, reading, and damned if the page of text did not float right up into my
mind's eye. I re-read the passage just as it floated away, and answered the
jerk's question, quoting verbatim.
Furor
Marty Billingsley
Don Tuite <don_...@REMOVETHIShotmail.com> wrote:
>On 30 Sep 2003 09:03:48 -0700, jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
>
>>One of the great advantages of online etexts is the
>>ease of doing searches for a given word, phrase, or
>>even a substring within a word. As you're reading
>>a book on paper, if you feel the need to recheck a
>>passage you remember seeing dozens or hundreds of
>>pages earlier, this can be almost impossible to find.
>>
>>But there's a compensatory saving-grace, I find,
>>that usually my inner eye can recall fairly
>>accurately _where on the double-page spread_ the
>>item I want had fallen-- upper left to lower
>>right-- so the search process just involves
>>checking each two-page spread in this spot.
>>
>>But I wonder is this sort of memory common, and
>>commonly reliable?
>
>A sample of one: Yes, my memory works that way.
Increasing the sample size to two: yes, my memory
works exactly that way.
mazzolata
>
He's referring to our Boer Pastor, whom you just had a minor run-in with
on another thread ...
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Got to get behind the mule
in the morning and plow
smw
francis muir wrote:
I grew up on Tsitsero
> Neither is very attractive.
>
>
Louis Katorz
>On 30 Sep 2003 09:03:48 -0700,
>jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
>>One of the great advantages of online
>>etexts is the ease of doing searches for a
>>given word, phrase, or even a substring
>>within a word. As you're reading a book
>>on paper, if you feel the need to recheck a
>>passage you remember seeing dozens or
>>hundreds of pages earlier, this can be
>>almost impossible to find.
>>But there's a compensatory saving-grace,
>>I find, that usually my inner eye can recall
>>fairly accurately _where on the
>>double-page spread_ the item I want had
>>fallen-- upper left to lower right-- so the
>>search process just involves checking
>>each two-page spread in this spot.
>>But I wonder is this sort of memory
>>common, and commonly reliable?
>A sample of one: Yes, my memory works
>that way.
So does mine.
artyw
I am not that great at that type of memory, but often, when there was
an article in a journal, I could pick the right issue by remembering
the cover.
francis muir
13652-3F7...@storefull-2296.public.lawson.webtv.net, "Louis Katorz"
<che...@webtv.net> wrote:
My memory's shot so I rely on google.
Steve Hayes
>But I wonder is this sort of memory common, and
>commonly reliable?
It can take various forms.
One of the personal advantages I had from apartheid was that I worked as a bus
conductor on buses that were reserved for "Asiatics and coloureds only".
The buses ran empty on a route where "whites only" buses were full, wioth
people getting on and off at every stop. So I did a lot of reading. And I
could recall not only where on the page I had read somethinmg, but where the
bus was along the route.
When I had to write an exam, I revised the textbooks while travelling
backwards and forwards on the bus (6 times a day). When I wrote the exam, I
found I could jog my memory of what I had studied by picturing the next
section of the route, and even physical "images", the G-force and tensing of
the muscles as the bus went round a corner, helped to recall the content of
what I had been reading.
--
Steve Hayes
E-mail: haye...@yahoo.com
Web: http://www.geocities.com/hayesstw/stevesig.htm
J. Del Col
You had unwittingly built an artificial memory- a technique that goes
back to the Renaissance,if not earlier.
Ioan Couliano's --Eros and Magic in the Renaissance-- discusses this
technique and why it upset the clergy of the day.
See also --The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci--.
J. Del Col
J. Del Col
Steve Hayes
>hayesstw...@yahoo.com (Steve Hayes) wrote in message news:<3f7a4a3d...@news.saix.net>...
>> On 30 Sep 2003 09:03:48 -0700, jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
>>
>> >But I wonder is this sort of memory common, and
>> >commonly reliable?
>>
>> It can take various forms.
>>
>> One of the personal advantages I had from apartheid was that I worked as a bus
>> conductor on buses that were reserved for "Asiatics and coloureds only".
>>
>> The buses ran empty on a route where "whites only" buses were full, wioth
>> people getting on and off at every stop. So I did a lot of reading. And I
>> could recall not only where on the page I had read somethinmg, but where the
>> bus was along the route.
>>
>> When I had to write an exam, I revised the textbooks while travelling
>> backwards and forwards on the bus (6 times a day). When I wrote the exam, I
>> found I could jog my memory of what I had studied by picturing the next
>> section of the route, and even physical "images", the G-force and tensing of
>> the muscles as the bus went round a corner, helped to recall the content of
>> what I had been reading.
>
>You had unwittingly built an artificial memory- a technique that goes
>back to the Renaissance,if not earlier.
I thought it was a variety of mnemonic. Word mnemonics have never worked for
me, I can remember them, but not what they are supposed to remind me of, like
"towns, small islands, domus and rus".
But I found it was a kind of visual and kinetic (kinesthetic?) mnemonic.
>Ioan Couliano's --Eros and Magic in the Renaissance-- discusses this
>technique and why it upset the clergy of the day.
I'll try to remember to look for it next time I go to the library.
Larisa
> But I wonder is this sort of memory common, and
> commonly reliable?
Mine certainly doesn't work this way. I can recall short passages
verbatim, but it is an auditory memory rather than a visual one.
LM
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> Ask Silke-- she never lies and she's always right:
> http://www.robotwisdom.com/issues/topos.html
It occurred to me yesterday that the opposite of a topos is Utopia.
francis muir
"tomca...@yaNOSPAMhoo.com" <tomca...@yaNOSPAMhoo.com> wrote:
Except, of course, that Utopia is definitionally a topos.
Steve Hayes
<francis....@balliol.org> wrote:
>> It occurred to me yesterday that the opposite of a topos is Utopia.
>
>Except, of course, that Utopia is definitionally a topos.
Ah, that is Paradox, and therefore profound.
David J. Loftus
I haven't had to try to remember something for a test in a long,
long time, but when making reading notes, I've noticed that if
I didn't copy something interesting down, and I read on for 10, 15,
20 pages, and then decide I'd like to revisit an interesting thought
or comely phrase, I can often recall how far down the page I saw it.
Larisa's reference to auditory memory brings up my strong memory
for certain music. There are probably dozens of pop songs for which I
can remember where I was, precisely, the first time I heard them --
or, less often, when they made a significant impact. (I heard the
Stones' "Shattered" quite a few times and didn't think much of it,
and then I heard it full blast at a Ken's Pub just east of Harvard
Square on Massachusetts Avenue -- which establishment no longer
exists, I noticed two weeks ago -- and suddenly it made a lot more
"sense.")
Something similar goes for written word performed aloud: I hear
a lot of Benedick's lines in the voice of Sam Waterston, and many of
Rosalind's lines in the voice of young Maggie Smith. (Understand, I
heard both as recordings many times as a young'un; this is not
based on one hearing alone.)
David Loftus
Louis Katorz
>On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 19:11:42 -0700,
>francis muir
><francis....@balliol.org> wrote:
>>>It occurred to me yesterday that the
>>>opposite of a topos is Utopia.
>>Except, of course, that Utopia is
>>definitionally a topos.
>Ah, that is Paradox, and therefore
>profound.
Whenever I see or hear the word "paradox", I'm reminded of the time I
won five dollars in a local newspaper weekly contest in which you had to
used a play on a word in a sentence. This was in the early 1970's. My
entry was: Pier 1 and Pier 2 are a paradox. Yikes!
Don Tuite
Katorz) wrote:
>
>Whenever I see or hear the word "paradox", I'm reminded of the time I
>won five dollars in a local newspaper weekly contest in which you had to
>used a play on a word in a sentence. This was in the early 1970's. My
>entry was: Pier 1 and Pier 2 are a paradox. Yikes!
Whatever happened to those grizzled editors in green eyeshades who'd
have grumbled that a dock is the water next to a pier?
Don
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>Steve Hayes wrote:
I saw something similar in the manual for the Paradox database program.
David J. Loftus
Whenever I hear "paradox," I picture two weiner dogs.
David Loftus
Richard Harter
wrote:
I am reminded of the two PhD theses that proved contradictory results
within an axiom system. It was a paradox from a pair of docs.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
"We have people from every planet on the earth in this State."
-- California Governor Gray Davis