How to improve your memory for numbers

There is a rule that the highest number of things that we can recollect temporarily is around seven (in fact seven plus or minus two). So we can recollect easily a telephon number. But what if the number to recollect has 20 or more digits? The trick is to split the original group in seven small numbers that you can easily remember. You can do this splitting in a systematic way and learn a way to represent every group of,let's say, three digits by a new superdigit. Since there are only 1000 three number combinations, you have to learn only 1000 superdigits. In any case with some training you can increase the size of numbers you remember temporarily from seven up to 20 easily. A study has shown that a trained individual can reach even 60. (This strategy is called chunking and is used to improve short-term memory: see chunking in Wikipedia). The discoverer of the 7+-2 rule, George A. Miller called this process recoding. It is interesting to note that most mnemonics systems are based on such recoding of the original information.In this case their use is mostly to improve long-term memory.

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