In week two, ‘Brains’ of the University of York’s The Biology of Bugs, Brains and Beasts course, for our homework we’ve been asked to get our neurones and synapses working by trying to memorise Pi. They give us the ratio to a hundred digits but in my comic strip mnemonic I’ve gone for the first fourteen:
3.14159265358979
I have a habit of looking for dates when I’m memorising numbers, so the first four digits 1415 set the historical period for me. I did actually have a Welsh granny, Anne Jones, from a Welsh-speaking family in Connah’s Quay, so for the ‘9’ I decided to go for ‘Nain’, pronounced ‘nine’, the Welsh for granny.
To really make this work as a memory-jogger, I’d have to try and bring in all my senses when remembering this story: the buzz of angry bees, the sweet scent of the meadow flowers, the texture of the old gate as it creaks open. It’s important to get a flow going for the story because I need to remember the numbers in a particular order. It’s different to one of those memory games where you’re asked to remember a collection of random objects in any order.
I crammed four digits into the final frame. At this rate, to remember one hundred digits, I’d end up with graphic novel seven or eight pages long. In case I ever need to know the ratio of Pi to fourteen decimal places, I should be able to remember by thinking back to the comic strip but, more usefully, I’ve enjoyed getting back into drawing on my iPad, which I’ve taken a bit of break from over the last three months.
Link
The Future Learn Biology of Bugs, Brains and Beasts course run by the biosciences department of the University of York