Friday Factoids – Saturday edition

January 7, 2006 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

I was fighting with my email problem yesterday and forgot about the Friday Factiods … despite my PDA beeping at me to remind me.

Our short-term memory can only hold seven pieces of information.
One way to remember facts is to use abbreviations or acronyms, for example HOMES is a good way to remember the names of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.
Another memory aid is rhyming, e.g. “Thirty days hath September” to remember how many days are in each month.
My personal favourite way to remember things is to write them down
In the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan repeatedly told a heartbreaking story of a World War II bomber pilot who ordered his crew to bail out after his plane had been seriously damaged by an enemy hit. His young belly gunner was wounded so seriously that he was unable to evacuate the bomber. Reagan could barely hold back his tears as he uttered the pilot’s heroic response: “Never mind. We’ll ride it down together.” …this story was an almost exact duplicate of a scene in the 1944 film “A Wing and a Prayer.” Reagan had apparently retained the facts but forgotten their source. [This is called source amnesia or memory misattribution.]
Flash memory (as used in digital cameras and USB keys / thumb drives) uses a process called Fowler-Nordheim Tunneling to store data.
Our short-term memory can only hold seven pieces of information. Yes, Homer Simpson was right – when we learn something new an old memory is pushed out.