Conference rusure::math

1422.0. "PNEUMONICS" by HERON::BUCHANAN (Holdfast is the only dog, my duck.) Tue Apr 16 1991 17:02

		     -< e ~= 1.415916336365338479... >-


	OK, I allege that mnemonics are useless.   Given any mnemonic, I
can create a mismonic which is at least as (or *more*) memorable than the
original, but is simply WRONG.

	For instance:

> How I want a drink (alcoholic of course) after the hours studying
> difficult quantum mechanics.

	could become

How I want a drink (alcohol of course) after a day's study of
quantum mechanics.

[Parenthetically, Peter Gilbert has remarked:
    Could be.  Anyway, for additional digits, I usually continue:
    "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary ...".]

	Actually, the prose mnemonics are really the easiest meat, because:
	(1) the original author was constrained by what he was trying to
mnemonicise, while the faker can pursue more optimal scansion.
	(2) there is no rhyme, which could serve as error-checking.
	(3) famous misquotes such as:
		All that glitters isn't gold.
		Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well.
		Lead on, Macduff.
testify to the ability of such soundbites to be mutated by time.


	Or, let's try again:

>	Pie
>
>    I wish I could determine Pi.
>    Eureka cried the great inventor,
>    Christmas pudding, Christmas pie,
>    is the problem's very center.


	piE

    I wish I could determine E.
    Easter Egg and Easter tea,
    "Eureka" cried the wet inventor,
    This Enigma's Epicenter.
    
	I've tried to combine lots of mismonic techniques there, but anyone of
them could have slipped in and not been noticed.   Really, verse is just too 
easy, but let's pick some more challenging mnemonics.

>	The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins
>	Next the Crab, the Lion Shines,
>	The Virgin and the Scales
>	The Scorpion, Archer, and the He-Goat
>	The Man who bears the Watering-Pot
>	And the Fish with Glittering Tails

	The Bull, the Ram, the Heavenly Twins
	Then the Fish with Glittering Fins
	The Virgin, Hunter, and the Goat-Male,
	The Scorpion and the Scales
	Next the Crab, the Lion Sails,
	And the Man who bears the Watering-Pail.

	Definitely an improvement on the original.   I particularly like the
way Orion has barged Sagittarius entirely out of the Zodiac.
	


	Richard Von York Gave Bottle of Ink


	Red sky first light:  shepherd's delight

[Parenthetically note:  "blue sky at night:  watch isn't right."]


	Sail after steam.


	Fall forward Springbok!

(some discouragement to a member of the South African Rugby Union team scrum?)


	White square in top right.
(or)	Square black in right back
(or)	Knight white on the right.
(or)	Bright white in h8.
(or)	The kings start on squares of their own colour.


	The snake goes up the tree, round the hole and eats the bunny-rabbit.


	There's a couple of ones which are very mundane mnemonics, but the
mismonic transformations are sublime.


	A mnemonic I was taught at school was: "Dunlop's Super Triangle".
You drew it:

        ^
       / \
      /   \
     /     \
    /\  D  /\
   /  \   /  \
  /    \ /    \
 /  S   |   T  \
/       |       \
-----------------

	And the idea is that it helps to remember the relationships between
distance, speed, and time:
	D = ST
	S = D/T
	T = D/S

	Can you guess what the mismonic could be?


-----------------
\       |       /
 \  D   |   S  /
  \    / \    /
   \  /   \  /
    \/  T  \/
     \     /
      \   /
       \ /
        v


	Another bland mnemonic was to remember the shape of the trigonometric
curves sine and cosine within the interval [0,2pi].   You were to remember
than sin and cos has 1 and 2 peaks respectively in this interval.

>	A Shirt has 2 Cuffs

	However, there are many mismonics for this:

	(1) Consider the interval [-pi,pi]
	(2) Consider minima instead of maxima
	(3) A shirt has 1 Collar and 2 Sleeves


Finally...

	Thirty days hath November...
	August, May and December,
	All the rest have three-three,
	Excepting alone January,
	Which has twenty-four days clear,
	And ninety-eight in each leap year.


Challenge: can you find a mnemonic for which no mismonics exist?   Or can
you come up with blithe mismonics for existing memory aids?   Or can you
improve on some of mine?


Regards,
Andrew.

    Reminds me of a friend I had who used to think that the word was
    "pnuemonics".
    
    Actually, I think that "pnuemonics" has a better ring to it than
    "mismonics".  ;-)
    
    --  Barry

>    Actually, I think that "pnuemonics" has a better ring to it than
>    "mismonics".  ;-)

	Assuming that we're allowed to spell it properly: "pneumonics"
I'll agree with you and change the base note title.   I've thought of a
few more of them, by the way.


	SOHCAHTOA

	(Formula they taught me at school for remembering the definition of
secant, cosecant, and tangent :-)


	How to tie a reef knot:

	right over left, left under right


	The fates of the 8 wives of Henry VI:

	divorced, beheaded, burnt, died,
	divorced, beheaded, burnt, survived.


	There are various mnemonics, that I haven't been able to do
anything to yet:

	Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

	FACE

	The "two-fists" way of determining which months have 31 days

Does anyone have any ideas?

Regards,
Andrew.

>	Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
    
    I thought this was "All Good Boys Deserve Fudge"?
    
    
>	The "two-fists" way of determining which months have 31 days
    
    I can never remember how you put your fists for this, which side you
    start on and whether you use thumbs or not.
    
    
    

>>	The "two-fists" way of determining which months have 31 days

	The 'piano keys' method may be easier. Start with the key 
immediately to the left of a group of three black keys (G?); then the white 
keys are 31-day months, the black keys shorter.

  Feb  Apr  Jun       Sep  Nov
  **** **** ****      **** ****
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
Jan  Mar  May  Jul  Aug  Oct  Dec

Put another way, don't use your thumbs.

>>	The "two-fists" way of determining which months have 31 days

	Hold your hands as if you're water skiing.

		^   ^   ^   ^     ^   ^   ^   ^		<- Your knuckles
		             
		J F M A M J J     A S O N D

	You have hills and troughs; 31 days and 30 days (except for February).

	How do you remember not to count your thumbs?  The thumb knuckles
	don't "get up to" the rest.  How do you remember to not count the
	space between your hands as a trough?  If you do that, the pattern is
	31,30,31,30,..., all the way through, and so a much simpler mnemonic
	would suffice.

    A litre of water
    is a pint and a quarter.

    
    One I always remember (correctly?):
    
    			"Wedding in white, sailor's delight.
    			 No, that's not it..."
    
    		
    					Betty White,
    					on The Mary Tyler Moore Show

    I always thought it was Every Good Boy Deserves Fun!
    
    How about this one for remembering how to spell necessary ...
    
    Never Eat Cake Eat Salmon Sandwiches And Remain Young.
    
    For SOHCAHTOA, Silly Old Harry Caught A Herring Trawling Off America.
    
    
    Lisa.
    

Re: -.1

	I think you are confusing "pneumonics" with "mnemonics".   All your
inputs would help people to remember things correctly, which is not the
idea at all!   I'm looking for things to help people make mistakes.

	For instance, the famous musical pneumonic:

				DEFACE

Regards,
Andrew.

    NECASSERRY:
    
    Never Eat Cake And Sandwiches So Everyone Remains Really Young.

    A clarification from somebody who understands Greek.
    
    The root is: PNEUMON (Greek) = LUNG (English), and PNEUMONICS is the
    (medical) term for getting cold in your lungs, "having pneumonia".
    
    The other root is MNEME (Greek) = MEMORY (english), and MNEMONIC is
    the term for "the ability to remember" or "to have strong memory"
    
    George [the Greek]