Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-01-23

he is naturally gifted with a good
memory?
Wishing to find the answer to this
feat, Harold Ellis Jones, psychologist
at Columbia, interviewed and tested
the memory prodigy.
He first found out what the man
could do, then got his own explana.
ton of how he went about doing 1t,
and finally tested him with ordinary
memory and intelligence tests. The
facts he uncovered, as related in the
Journal of Applied Psychology, seem
to upset one Of the oldest popular
beliefs and form one of the most
interesting of recent psychological
discoveries.
Here are some of the things the
memory expert can do:
Give, with no more than one or two
seconds delay, the population by the
1920 census of every town and city in
the United States of over 5000 popu-
lation.
Name the county seat of any coun.
ty in any State in the United States.
Give the population of 1900 leading
foreign cities.
Give the distance between New
York Tor Chicago and any other city
in the United States.
Give the distance between the larg-
est city in each State and any other
city in the State.
Give statistics concerning 5000.
moutains and rivers.
Give dates and facts on 1000 in
ventions.
In addition, recall a vast stock of
unclassified facts from geography and
history.
He had previously memorized the
population of all towns in the United
States over 1000 by the 1910 census,
but he is now trying to forget" this
obsolete information.
An hour-long steady examination,
with the expert giving his answers
in a steady fire, suff1ced to sample
only per cent of the material he
carried ready in his head. When
practicing, it takes him nearly a week
of full working days to go over the
entire series of his accumulated
statistics.
And in learning the population
figures he has secured his associa-
tons both ways. Here is a sample
of the examination given to him:
Question-What town has poula-
ton of 1853?
Answer-San Diego, Calf.
@. Which one has S3,252 people in
it?
"A. savannah, ia.
Q. Which one has 8,4S1?
A. Conshohocken, Pa.
Q. What one has 25,739?
A. Saskatchewan, Canada.
O. What one has 176, 467?
A. Lima, Peru.
The results of this test showed that
in a sample selection of so cities the
memory expert recited $50 figures, of
which only IA were wrong giving him
an accuracy of 95 per cent.
What methods does he use?
DIR. Jones got the memory wizard
to give examples. and they show
plainly that practice through many
years has equipped him with so many
associations with figures that it is al
most impossible to offer him a number
which he cannot split up and remem-
Der by associating the parts with
other numbers that he knows well.
For example:
DR.. Jones gave him the number
4836179621 to memorize, giving him
35 seconds to study it. -Four hours
later he repeated it without error.
How did you do it?" DIR. Jones
asked.
when I saw this number" the
expert replied, II read it as 4, S36, 179,
621. l remembered because of the
Fourth of July; 836 just had to mem
orize without any help, but If | were
doing it again it would probably occur
to me that 836 was the Chinese popu-
lation of Texas in 1910, and then I
wouldn't forget 1t; 179 Is easy to re-
member because that is the number
of miles from New York to Harris