h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

People can always add comments with new mnemonics in to the bottom of the entry..

I think it's a great article; I have a terrible memory and have always wondered about things like the "peg" system and how it works. Your piece made some of these techniques very clear, and it is a page I would return to (ironically enough, because I wouldn't be able to remember all the methods - perhaps you could find me a mnemonic to make it easier for me? )

I think it would be a lot more readable, though, if you could split it into two articles (I have to keep explaining that I'm new around these parts and probably don't know what I'm talking about!). You could structure it to explain the different methods and pick out two or three good examples for each - just sticking to the processes and how it all works. Then a second article going into each area as you did and going through the various mnemonics for astronomy, etc. This would make it more manageable for the reader, and you could embolden the subheadings for the second piece to make them clearer, too (to be honest, it took until the second read for me to notice that they were listed alphabetically).

Just a suggestion, as I say it was a great read and something I would come back to. Liked Z's suggestion of people being able to add their own too.... Well done!

Hi Skankyrich,

for your comments. There is a separate EG entry (by another Researcher) which does as you suggest, and was referred to by someone else above who was criticising the need for another such entry in the Edited Guide. It's called 'Mnemonics and other Learning Devices' and i's at A765975. It is hyperlinked from my article.

However, my article is intended primarily to be of use to people who need a mnemonic to remember something. Hopefully, they'll be able to find it here.

I've now added entries under 'aviation', 'botany' and 'driving'; and added a few more medical mnemonics.

The one thing I'd really like to get sorted is the nice chops, for elements in proteins. Maybe it should be

NIce CHOPS

for Nitrogen, Iodine, Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, Sulphur


or it could be

NICe CHOPS, where the 2nd 'C' is calcium. In fact this seems quite likely.

This was a complicated entry to write (due to numbering, emboldening, colon use etc etc), and so if people could look out for inconsistencies I would be grateful.

One reason I queried the Nice CHOPS one is that people usually refer to proteins as containing just 5 elements: C, H, O, N and S.

A hard-to-interpret mnemonic for something that most people can remember easily seems to defeat the purpose of the whole thing.


Azara

Well, there's a whole group of metalloproteins, e.g. iodine in thyroxine, iron in haemoglobin, calcium in calmodulin, there are more than 100 zinc-containing proteins, viatimin B12 contains cobalt. Come to think of it, NICe CHOPS seems wholly inadequate!

P.S. If you think NICe CHOPS is hard to remember, look at the one for the pre-flight checks for gliding - under 'Aviation!

"Well, there's a whole group of metalloproteins, e.g. iodine in thyroxine, iron in haemoglobin, calcium in calmodulin, there are more than 100 zinc-containing proteins, viatimin B12 contains cobalt. Come to think of it, NICe CHOPS seems wholly inadequate"

Exactly--it refers to more than is found in standard proteins, and is very misleading when it comes to the proteins with prosthetic groups. (I wouldn't count thyroxine as a protein, either!)

I described it as hard to interpret, not hard to remember--you still aren't sure what it means, and neither am I. At that rate, it seems to fail a fairly basic test!

Azara

Well, it's a mnemonic that a colleague says he was taught - I never was!

I'm just waiting for him to tell me what it was to see if it's worthwhile.

If it's just supposed to represent the standard elements then it might still be worthwhile because the fitting to a mnemonic would provide a comfort zone to those trying to remember the elements when under pressure in an exam.

If it's a fairly standard one that people are taught, then it's worth including.

In my view, some so-called mnemonics are so difficult to remember that you need a mnemonic to remember the mnemonic!

Hence I'm a bit of a purist and prefer mnemonics that are explicitly to do with the subject matter, e.g. 'My Very Easy Methid Just Speeds Up Naming Planets'. Unfortunately, there aren't too many of these.

I suppose my basic tests as to whether a mnemonic is worth including are that:

1 It helps to remember a list or sequence of information.

2 It is easier to memorize than the information itself.

3 There is some non-trivial reason why someone would need to remember that particular subset of information in the first place.

I think "Sir Humphrey Davy" fails the first test. (And adding the paragraph explaining that if someone already knows a lot of chemistry this one fact will inevitably set off a particular line of thought doesn't make it any more convincing!)

I think "Nice CHOPS" fails all three tests.

And now for the latest nitpick

I think you should remove the whole section about

"Along came Egypt,
Feeling very Hungary
Ate some Turkey
Dipped in Greece."

It fails test three with an audible thump--the fact that different people thought it was to remember either Mediterranean countries or World War I participants, and that it's not a full list for either, makes it useless as a mnemonic. (The long footnote about the Mediterranean countries could then be dropped as well.)

I learnt a version of this as a child, and it was clearly a nonsense chant playing on the idea that the names of some countries have other meanings:
"Austria got Hungary, took a bit of Turkey, dipped it in Greece, fried it in Japan, and ate it off China". Sometimes a poem is just a poem, and a chant is just a chant!


It's always much harder in Peer Review to get someone to cut sections out than it is to get extra bits included, but I seriously think that dropping these three dubious bits would improve the focus of the entry.


Azara

I think actually you're right about 'Long-legged Italy'.

I was rather hoping bthat somebody might clarify what it was a mnemonic for (as Daily Mail readers asserted that they were taught it asc a mnemonic device; and I was happy that my eEntry might have some historical/nostalgic value as well as being functional.

Just thought of another one.

Two Zulus Bugger My Cat - for branches of the facial nerve

Temporal zymomatic, buccal, madibular, cervical.

Think I've got that one - or very similar. 's to have a look.

- good job I checked. My version had a 'marginal' as well as mandibular - but no exrea 'm' in the mnemonic. Don't know where that came from!

Decided to drop the 'NICE CHOPS'. Although I can vaguely remember 'coming across it' in the past (rather than being taught i) I can't remember what it was supposed to mean. I can't make it fit the elements in amino acids (as suggested by my colleague; who hasn't got back to me on this). I suspect the 'mnemonic' is supposed to list those elements essential for life, but my 'C. HOPKINS CaFe' one is better for this.

for the removal of Nice chops!

I agree that C. HOPKINS CaFe is a good one...

Azara

Here's one that gives the order of the signs of the Zodiac (there are lots of slight variations on it):

The Ram, the Bull and the Heavenly Twins
And next the Crab, the Lion shines
The Virgin and the Scales
The Scorpion, Archer and He-Goat
The Man that carries the Watering-Pot
And the Fish with the glittering tails.


Azara

I like that-I'll put it in.(Haven't seen it anywhere else, either)

I do not think this entry should be accepted as an Edited Entry. THere is already an edited entry on mnemonics. This one is not any different, it is just longer. The author should update the other one rather than putting this one into Peer Review.

As IO keep saying ad nauseum - NONE of the other entries are categorised in the way this one is. One of the other entries is categorised according to different types of mnemonic and, frankly, I think it's still very disorganised. My one is categorised according to application and has the capability of logical expansion.

To update the other one would mean a TOTAL re-organisation together with the inclusion of a lot of the extra mnemonics which I've got i.e. a total re-write (Which is what I suppose I've done). However, as I don't go into the detail of different types of mnemonic, beyond mentioning that they exist - and cross-referencing to the other site - the two Entries are completely different. They perform different functions.