{"id":22823,"date":"2020-12-13T21:46:23","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T02:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=22823"},"modified":"2020-12-13T21:46:23","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T02:46:23","slug":"accidental-mnemonic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=22823","title":{"rendered":"Accidental mnemonic"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In my head I see a table that looks like this:
\n

<\/p>\n\n\n
A
A
A
A
C<\/th>\n		C
C
D
F
G<\/th>\n		H
I
I
I
I<\/th>\n		K
K
L
M
M<\/th>\n		M
M
M
M
M<\/th>\n		M
N
N
N
N<\/th>\n		N
N
N
N
O<\/th>\n		O
O
P
R
S<\/th>\n		S
T
T
U
V<\/th>\n		V
W
W
W
W<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\n <\/small>
\nThe 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So I guess you could call it an accidental mnemonic. I wonder how often something like that happens. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “Accidental mnemonic”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22823"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22823"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22847,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22823\/revisions\/22847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}