A mnemonic is something that can help you remember things. Sometimes it is a rhyme, or it can be an ‘acronym’ – a word made up by abbreviating the first letter of each word in a list. PIN, for example, is an acronym for Personal Identification Number.
How Many Days?
Whether you’re counting down the days until your birthday, or trying to work out the day you were born on, this rhyme comes in handy:
30 days hath September,
April, June and November
And all the rest have 31
Except for February alone
Which has 28 days clear
And 29 in each Leap year.
How I Wish I Could Remember Pi!
Remembering pi to more than a couple of decimal places might be less difficult than it seems at first. All you need is a rhyme or sentence where each word has the corresponding number of letters to the numbers in pi. For example, ‘How I wish I could calculate pi before lunch, for lunch includes fantastic rounded dumplings,’ gives you pi to 14 places:
3.14159265358979
In a fraction (see here), which number is the numerator, and which is the denominator? Use this as a reminder:
NUmerator Up,
Denominator Down
Mean, Mode or Median?
When you’re dealing with data and averages (see here), how do you remember what mean, mode and median each mean? It’s quite muddling.
Mode and most both have four letters and both start with ‘mo’. You can remind yourself with a sentence like this:
‘There once was a mean average. He had a median caught in the middle. The mode appeared most.’
Compass Directions
To make good use of the maps here, you’ll need to know which way north, south, east and west are. Use one of these mnemonics to remember them clockwise from the top, where north is:
‘Never Eat Shredded Wheat,’ or,
‘Never Eat Slimy Worms.’
