https://xkcd.com/2937

Alt text:

Sorry to make you memorize this random string of digits. If it helps, it can also double as a mnemonic for remembering your young relatives’ birthdays, if they happened to have been born on February 5th, 2018.

  • elvith@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    My brain: “Ugh I suck at memorizing random numbers! I just know I won’t be able to remember that.”

    Also my brain: “Oh a fire/medical emergency/… - lets call emergency services!” immediately followed by "♪ 0118999881999119725…3 ♪ "

  • A_A@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    in this cartoon, the lady character says : “Easy - - just memorize it as the first three prime numbers, if you realise you couldn’t remember what came after 2 and started to panic and get them increasingly wrong”
    first 3 primes : “2, 3, 5”
    forgot 2nd : “2, …, 5”
    then, get the next primes : “7, 11”
    … increasingly wrong : “not 518 ? ?”
    No, either it’s a bad one or I’m missing something.

    https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2937:_Room_Code
    Cueball and Megan are on vacation or otherwise traveling, and receive a code for their hotel room. Megan gives a seemingly nonsensical and unhelpful mnemonic by which Cueball can remember it… which, inexplicably, actually helps Cueball to remember the code. Cueball becomes VERY angry on realizing this.

    The first three prime numbers are actually 2, 3, and 5. So this technique easily identifies the first two digits “02”. “05” is slightly wrong because it’s not the second prime number, it’s the third. And “18” is more wrong because it’s not actually a prime number, it’s 2 x 3 x 3.

    So the mnemonic itself doesn’t really provide the method for remembering the code. Instead, figuring out how to apply the bogus mnemonic will reinforce your memory of the code.