Comments on: With mnemonics, Every Good Boy Does Fine

With mnemonics, Every Good Boy Does Fine

kmel — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:15:05 -0800

Monkey Nut Eating Means Old Nutshells In Carpet, aka mnemonics! They come in many forms, helping you remember everything from taxonomic classifications ("King Phillip Came Over For Good Sex") to the order of the planets ("My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets") to musical staves to the first 31 decimal places of pi to how to spell tricky words such as "rhythm" or "principal." They're more a way of life for med students, birdwatchers, and boaters. Which mnemonics have helped you survive?

By: Captain_Tenille

Captain_Tenille — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:25:59 -0800

"Beer before liquor, never sicker. "Liquor before beer, you're in the clear." Yes, it's not really a mnemonic, but you hear it a lot. Personally, I've always thought it was a ridiculous liberal myth.

By: Caffine_Fiend

Caffine_Fiend — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:29:01 -0800

Phil Donahue Never Treats Sick People Anymore - for the seven layer OSI model: Physical, Data link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:30:01 -0800

If there's a single person in the United States that can tell you how many days are in a particular month without having the word "hath" run through his or her mind, I haven't met him or her yet.

By: mbd1mbd1

mbd1mbd1 — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:35:42 -0800

Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls, But Violet Gives Willingly. Thanks to my high school physics teacher for that one.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:38:05 -0800

Kathy Murdered Fifteen Disco Musicians.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:42:16 -0800

I Prefer Milk and Tea for the five phases of cell mitosis Interphase Prophase, Metaphase Anaphase Telophase... Now if I could only get RID of the damned mnemonic since I haven't used it since junior high. can tell you how many days are in a particular month.... I use the knuckle method instead.

By: spilon

spilon — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:44:45 -0800

All Day I Dream About Sex = Adidas

By: riffola

riffola — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:47:30 -0800

jessamyn, the knuckle method is used to teach the same to kids in India too.

By: Fourmyle

Fourmyle — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:49:29 -0800

General Electric Leaves No Darkness is one of the few things I've retained from my Hebrew School days.

By: Blake

Blake — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:49:47 -0800

If was was creative...this would be funny Mtt Excitedly Tries Another Failed Internet Language To Excited Ruffians

By: GaelFC

GaelFC — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:49:59 -0800

Richard Of York Gained Battles In Vain, for the colors of the rainbow. I like it much better than Roy G. Biv. And since I took piano, all the music ones: Every Good Boy Does Fine/Deserves Fudge, etc etc etc.

By: Blake

Blake — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:50:55 -0800

Arg, of course the M should be Matt.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:51:12 -0800

"Thirty days hath September and what the fuck, I can't remember..." Hee, hee, that's beautiful, jessamyn. Nice to meet you!

By: .kobayashi.

.kobayashi. — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:51:46 -0800

Once I made a mnemonic, one I dearly needed, to remember a set of 11 threats to internal validity that could plague social science research. Here's the catchy, if fairly nonsensical, device: Heavy Metal Testing IS SAD. --Center for Disease Control. And here's more or less what it stood for. History Maturation T (?) Instrumentation Statistical Regression Selection Bias Attrition Diffusion Competitive Rivalry(??) Demoralization (?) C (?) The mnemonic seemed necessary because I couldn't even remember how many of these things there were, let alone what they were. It failed miserably; I'd try to recall the mistakes I could be making, something like Selection Bias, and all I could think of was "SAD." Even now, to recreate as much of this as I could for you, I needed help. Of course, I still remember the mnemonic, several years later, though, as you can see, I never quite pinned down what it means. Heavy metal testing is sad though. I feel very strongly about that. Nice post, kmel!

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:52:17 -0800

I've got the knuckle method down to the point where I can picture the bumps in my mind and instantly associate each mountain/valley with a specific month. By the time the poem types have "30 days hath" thought of I've already got december=31 matched up. It's wicked fast once you get some practice.

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:55:06 -0800

If there's a single person in the United States that can tell you how many days are in a particular month without having the word "hath" run through his or her mind It's easier to just remember that every other month has 31 days, with a "wrinkle" at July/August which both have 31, then it goes back to every other month. So, odd months have 31 days up to July, then even months after that. The "off" months all have 30 days except, obviously, for February; hopefully you don't need a mnemonic to remember that it has 28 days. That's the basis of the "knuckle" method, but you don't really need the mnemonic once you understand the pattern. I have never really understood the whole mnemonic craze anyway. The mnemonics tend to be only marginally more meaningful than the things they ostensibly help you remember and thus are themselves not conducive to easy memorization. Might as well just memorize the actual thing you're trying to remember; you'll have no trouble remembering it if it's something you use often. And if it's not something you use often, you can just look it up when you need it. My favorite spoof of the tendency for mnemonics to be no simpler than their targets is probably Robert Anton Wilson's "Mother Very Easily Made Jam Sandwiches Using No Peanuts, Mayonnaise or Glue." It's the eleven planets, of course (in his books, the tenth and eleventh are named Mickey and Goofy).

By: GaelFC

GaelFC — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:56:05 -0800

For months, I always hear the corny song. "Thirty days has September; April, June and November, but who needs to remember? My days belong to you." If there's a rest of the song, I never heard it...

By: vito90

vito90 — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:11:16 -0800

The Indian princess SOHCAHTOA got me through high school geometry. sin=opposite/hypotenuse cosin=adjacent/hypotenuse tangent=opposite/adjacent

By: JanetLand

JanetLand — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:15:44 -0800

The Great Lakes: Huron Ontario Michigan Erie Superior

By: kmel

kmel — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:16:47 -0800

This post was inspired by this anatomy class I'm currently taking. Come test-cramming time, everyone shares the little mnemonics they come up with themselves. The wordplay and poetics involved are fascinating, worth a study themselves ... like, what makes the best mnemonics, in terms what helps you synthesize/retain the source info best? Kindall, I don't doubt that they are purpose-defeating or useless to some people. Different learning strategies, etc.

By: Pressed Rat

Pressed Rat — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:17:55 -0800

mdb1mdb1-- That old one about resistor color coding brings back memories (i gues that's the point!) For our teleytype friends wanting the least number of characters to check out all the letters on the keyboard, there's "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"

By: Pressed Rat

Pressed Rat — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:18:49 -0800

mdb1mdb1-- That old one about resistor color coding brings back memories (i guess that's the point!) For our teleytype friends wanting the least number of characters to check out all the letters on the keyboard, there's "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"

By: riffola

riffola — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:20:21 -0800

We never were taught a mnemonic for the colours of the rainbow either, for us it was just a sing song "Violent, Indigo, Blue and Green (take a breath) Yellow, Orange, Red" For resistor colour codes, we were taught "B. B. ROY of Great Britain has a Very Good Wife" it has extra words to make a sentence. Now I remember it using "Badly burnt resistors on your ground bus void general warrantee"

By: riffola

riffola — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:22:05 -0800

er warranty

By: daveleck

daveleck — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:23:00 -0800

Geologists often use "Put Eggs On My Plate Please Henry" for the Epochs of the Cenozoic Era: Paleocene Eocene Oligocene Miocene Pliocene Pleistocene Holocene

By: synapse

synapse — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:28:18 -0800

Yeah, I learned the Indian princess trig as well, but what really worked for me was Some Old Horse Caught Another Horse Taking Oats Away. And for anyone here who has suffered through neuroanatomy : Some Say Marry Money But My Brother Says Big Boobs Matter More. (Brainstem nerves - a way to remember which ones are Sensory, Motor, or Both).

By: Ufez Jones

Ufez Jones — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:30:48 -0800

I always thought it was stupid as hell, but it worked. For Roman Numerals: I Viewed Xerxes Loping Carelessly Down Mountains.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:34:22 -0800

Mnemonics, our dear dear friend

By: tabbycat

tabbycat — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:39:12 -0800

For the planets I've always preferred Wilson & Shea's version - Mother Very Easily Made A Jam Sandwich, Using No Peanuts, Mayonnaise or Glue. This does include the two planets past Pluto, which are called Mickey and Goofy, of course!

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:41:45 -0800

Colorado Plateau semimentary rock layers at Lees Ferry, AZ: (bottom to top) "Many Canyon Walls Know No Capitalist Exploitation" = Moenkopi Chinle Wingate Kayenta Navajo Carmel Entrada (top to bottom) "Every Cute New Kangaroo Wants Chocolate Milk" do I win the most obscure prize?

By: ae4rv

ae4rv — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:42:18 -0800

Calvin Gets Down And Eats the Big Fuzzy Cat
(Circle of Fifths, or half of it anyway...I made this up when I took music theory for non-music majors).

By: jfuller

jfuller — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:46:39 -0800

Q: what does the H stand for in Jesus H Christ? A: haploid

By: crawl

crawl — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:53:23 -0800

To teach us the quadratic equation, my junior high algebra teacher taught us how to sing it in a song. He'd stand at the front of the room, pointer in hand, hands raised like a conductor, and lead us through shouting: "Negative B! Plus or minus the! Square root of B squared minus 4 AC! All over 2 A!" He'd shout "With feeling!!" after we got through, and we'd go around again. Not a mnemonic, but a good way to remember, as it's at least 9 years later now, and I still remember the damn thing.

By: notsnot

notsnot — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:58:51 -0800

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally - for the order of operations in math (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiply/Divide, Add/Subtract). Of course, since I teach (ostensibly - people in college that think 1/3 is 1.3?) college math, I can be a bit bawdy with it and say, "Please excuse my dumb-ass son" instead.

By: spartacusroosevelt

spartacusroosevelt — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:00:36 -0800

The one that helped me through Physiological Psychology: On Old Olympus Towering Top A Fat Virgin Girl Vends Sudsy Hops. Its the Cranial Nerves of course, though Yale and I disagree on what to call the Spinal Accessory.

Synapse, Marry Money was the other one that got me through Phys. Psych.

By: widdershins

widdershins — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:21:12 -0800

DR & MRS VANDERTRAMP for the verbs in French that are conjugated w/etre instead of avoir. Please pretend there's a circumflex over that e.

By: SisterHavana

SisterHavana — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:24:11 -0800

I still remember Every Good Boy Does Fine from grade school music classes. ; )

By: vorfeed

vorfeed — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:29:44 -0800

There are a ton of them for memorizing Japanese kanji characters. I find a lot of Henshall's to be a little old-fashioned and creaky, but chances are that a randomly-selected Western student will know more than a few of his. I usually use the ones from this kanji memorization game, or make up my own.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:53:22 -0800

Thanks, spart, I also once had to know the cranial nerves, and used that same mnemonic. Now I no longer know either the nerves or the mnemonic. I'M NO WIMP = states which border the Great Lakes (Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania.)

By: smcniven

smcniven — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:53:34 -0800

How about a Canadian entry: Sam and sue kiss at the church hall every wednesday after noon Saskatchewan!

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:00:18 -0800

Having dissed mnemonics in a previous post on this thread, I'd like to share a local one from Columbus, Ohio for remembering the east-west streets in downtown: "Spring along gaily through the broad, stately town." (Spring, Long, Gay, Broad, State, Town streets. Yes, there's a Gay Street in Columbus. A popular radio station had its studio at the corner of Gay and High.)

By: vito90

vito90 — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:11:48 -0800

Here's another good one that most Seattleites know and visitors to our city would do well to remember. The streets of downtown Seattle, in order: James and John Cherry and Columbia Madison and Main Spring and Seneca Union and University Pike and Pine "Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest"

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:35:01 -0800

It's not necessarily a mnemonic, but I recall a scene in "Nuns On The Run" where the Holy Trinity is described as being like a clover, three leaves and yet one leaf, which Michael Palin mangles horribly into "The Holy Trinity is like a clover: small, green, and split three ways." Oh, and the genuflection: "Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch."

By: serafinapekkala

serafinapekkala — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:35:11 -0800

vito90, rock on with SOHCAHTOA! i guess my insane math teacher didn't make that up after all...unless you went to EHS too? since i still remember all of these, i guess mnemonics really work: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas (order of the planets); "FACE in the space" and Every Good Boy Does Fine (notes in the musical notation staff); and from way back in the day, the method to divide fractions: SMURF (Same, Multiply, Upside-Down, Rename Fraction). i learned a bunch in law school too, but i guess the older brain can't retain stuff as long as the 9-year-old brain...

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:46:28 -0800

I was taught Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and Man Very Early Made Jar Stand Upright Neatly Period (and the H in Jesus H. Christ stand for Harold, as in Harold be thy name.)

By: ubi

ubi — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 14:06:11 -0800

"Pine to the Pacific, Bush to the Bay" gets you across town in San Francisco.. Also INRI = "Initiate Nail Removal Immediately..." Not mnemonic per se, but in the spirit of Jesus Harold...

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 15:39:38 -0800

A Parrot Says "Tell No Lies, Polly". Application Presentation Session Transport Network Link Physical - the layers of the OSI network stack.

By: stoneegg21

stoneegg21 — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 16:23:11 -0800

Never Eat Shredded Wheat-For the directions, NESW. I still can't remember them without saying it and pointing. I've got no sense of direction whatsoever.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 19:37:10 -0800

Well, my fave was already introduced by kindall and, er, reaffirmed by tabbycat (was that really in Illuminatus? I only remember it from Schrodinger's Cat). But how about these non-letter based mnemonics... "Lullaby, and goodnight..." "Here comes the bride..." "Mari(a, I just met a girl)..." "O-we-o. O-o-woh." "My Bon(nie lies over the ocean)..." "There's a (place for us)..." "Some... where... (over the rainbow)" These are ascending intervals (there's another set of descending ones), for those of us who can recognize them quickly on written music but are still terrible sight-singers. In order, the intervals (the part outside the parentheses above) are: minor third perfect fourth augmented fourth (diminished fifth) perfect fifth major sixth minor seventh octave I can't remember any for an ascending major third or minor sixth (anybody? anybody?) but I must have known them once. Obviously they weren't very memorable. Damned mnemonics. Always letting you down when you need them. They can go to hell, for all I care. Oh yeah. Also: All Students Take Calculus. Arctangent, Sine, Tangent, Cosine. There in this order on some graph. But I can't remember where they go. Y'see? See what I was tellin' ya?

By: donnagirl

donnagirl — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 20:26:24 -0800

Hmm, spartacusroosevelt's Virgin Girl was transformed into a Vain German at my school. (And she/he vended "a hop" which goes with the Yale list). I couldn't tell you the names of the nerves to save my life, but that phrase pops into my head at the oddest times.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 01:46:08 -0800

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one 'cept for February alone. It has twenty-eight days time, but leap years, twenty-nine.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 01:47:09 -0800

...but in leap years, twenty-nine.

By: starkeffect

starkeffect — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 03:32:01 -0800

I was always getting the westernmost provinces of Canada mixed up, so I made my own mnemonic: Be A Smart Man (from west to east: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba).

By: tabbycat

tabbycat — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 04:41:27 -0800

Anyone else remember the order of sharps in music with Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle? The reverse was also used - Battle Ends As Down Goes Charles' Father - but I don't recall what that was for.