In yesterday’s post I talked about how I memorized the 50 United States in alphabetical order. At the time I didn’t know that I was using a method to remember them all.
But today I realized that I get through them without missing any by employing a mnemonic. It’s not a very sophisticated mnenonic. I just impose enough structure so that I don’t end up missing any of the 50 states.
In my head I see a table that looks like this:
| A A A A C |
C C D F G |
H I I I I |
K K L M M |
M M M M M |
M N N N N |
N N N N O |
O O P R S |
S T T U V |
V W W W W |
|---|
The letters are the initials of the 50 states. The first five states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas and California — are in the first column, and so on, all the way to Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming in the last column.
I see this table in my head when I go through the states in order. I remember the states in groups of five, and it works like a charm.
The funny thing is that I didn’t do any of this on purpose. The table just showed up by itself when I set about memorizing the 50 states in alphabetical order.
So I guess you could call it an accidental mnemonic. I wonder how often something like that happens.