The Peg System is believed to have been invented by Henry Herdson, the author of the book The Art of Memory Made Plain. It is called the “peg” system because you establish a peg list in which the information to be remembered would hang on. But first, you have to create this peg list in your mind and familiarize yourself with it. It could be from 1 to 10, 1 to 100 or 1 to 1000.
There are some variations, the most popular of which are the Number Shape System and the Number Rhyme System.
Number Shape Peg System. The one developed by Henry Herdson is a peg list of objects that resembles the shapes of the numbers. For example, the number 1 resembles a candle, the number 2 a swan, so on and so forth.
Its advantage, as opposed to the Method of Loci and Link Method, is that you don’t have to memorize the items in order. You can retrieve the information in number 12 or number 14 without being lost or confused as long as you are already familiar with the pegs associated with these numbers.
The rationale behind this is that images are easier to remember than numbers. You can devise your own list of shapes that strongly remind you of each number.
Example:
0 – Donut
1 – Baseball bat
2 – Coat hanger
3 – McDonald’s
4 – Man sitting with crossed legs
5 – Ear
6 – Snail
7 – Axe
8 – Eyeglasses
9 – Beluga Whale
Number Rhyme Peg System. In 1879, John Sambrook modified the system by using words that rhyme with the numbers instead of their look-alikes. If you consider yourself more acquainted with auditory learning, then the Number Rhyme System will be ideal. Here, you associate the numbers with words that have similar sounds. These words must be nouns that can easily evoke their images in your mind.
Example:
1 – Van
2 – Zoo
3 – Tree
4 – Boar
5 – Dive
6 – Chicks
7 – Elven
8 – Skate
9 – Wine
10 – Pen
Once you have these peg lists, the next thing to do is to relive their images vividly in your mind. The key here is to be familiar with the images that come to mind as you think of the number. Once you have pre-memorized them, you can attach any items to the peg lists that you want to remember. The peg system is usually relevant in remembering things that must be in sequence or ones that have a numerical value.
For instance, under the Number Shape Peg System, imagine each image of the pre-memorized objects in the peg list and associate them to these grocery items in the following manner:
1. Shampoo – Donut with a bottle of Head & Shoulders in the middle
2. Mayonnaise – A baseball bat dipped in white mayo
3. Chicken – A whole chicken clamped on a coat hanger
4. Tomato – McDonald’s mascot holding a tomato
... and so on. You can do the same for the peg list under the Number Rhyme System.