How do you memorise 6-digit authentication codes?

It depends on the structure of the number. eg:

etc

Theo

Yes, if the number is already separated by hyphens/spaces, those are the chunks that I try to memorise.

Apparently when the GPO started issuing phone numbers that were longer than a couple of digits, they did some research and found that people could remember chunks of either 2 or 3 digits, but a 4-digit chunk was harder to remember.

I'm not sure why the UK read a chunk as a stream of digits (one-two-seven [pause] three-four-one) whereas European countries assign tens-and-units significance to pairs of digits (twelve [pause] seventy-three [pause] forty-one).

German has the problem of its "four and twenty blackbirds" reversal of tens and units - you hear drei-und-siebzig (three and seventy) but you write down

Most Germans have a mental buffer, waiting until they hear both numbers in the pair before writing down the digits. But I noticed one German writing down the digits in the order that he heard them: first the units, then the tens digit to the left of it; skip three spaces forwards for next unit and back one for tens. This three-steps-forwards, one-step-back thing seemed to be very cumbersome.

French falls foul of ambiguity because of its quatre-vignts notation for 80: quatre vignts dix could be any of:

quatre-vignts-dix-huit (98) quatre-vignts dix-huit (80 18)

A pause makes all the difference. I imagine that French speakers make a very exaggerated pause in the second case to avoid ambiguity, whereas almost no pause is needed between non-ambiguous pairs such as vignt-huit trente-quatre (28 34).

I notice on the continent people often quote the digits of a phone number in pairs, whereas the UK tends to quote a number in groups of three digits.

I originally put it down to how their phone company laid out the digits but I think it's more widespread than that.

Personally, I kind of visualise and alomst recognise the SIGHT of digit-pairs but I remember digit-triplets mainly by their SOUND.

I don't tend to memorise. Read it off the phone in bits, then read it back to check against the phone. Not like having it read out to you to memorise.

I find that I memorise phone numbers long term as 5 digits then 6 digits.

Cheers

Dave R

worse when they sent an internet link to click on to my non android nokia 1100

germans quote number pairs backwards, "five and twenty (blackbirds)" while we would say twenty-five.

Bank card Pin numbers are 4 digits because that is all that most people can manage to remember.

just write it down somewhere that only you can access, or split it into 3 groups of 2 digits and try and convert them into the ascii equivalent which, it you are lucky, might give you a 3-character code which is easier to remember.

That's what I was referring to above.

As already said, it may be structurally easier to work in digit pairs or triplets - or a mixture.

Surely the only rule is that it is discourteous to confirm back a number NOT in the format first spoken. E.g. 23 93 73 confirmed back as 239 373 !

PA

That sounds a bit synaethesic. I'm not sure I've ever been aware that I've remembered a phone number by what the groups of digits sound like. I imagine the sight of the digits on the page. But everyone has their own method of remembering things, and no method is better or worse than another, as long as it works and is quick to encode/decode. I understand that a way of remembering a sequence of objects so you can replay them in the right order is to devise a "story" in which all the objects appear. But when I've tried it, it takes me so long to encode them into the story and then to decode them later on, that it doesn't work for me.

I'm rather malicious. If someone quotes a phone number to me in groups of two, especially if those groups are given tens-and-units significance ("twenty-three forty-five" as opposed to "two three [pause] four five" I tend to read it back as digits in groups of three, because that's what I was

I actually do that intentionally both for myself and with others. It's a good check that a digit hasn't been misplaced or accidentally inverted e.g. forty two (40 2) vs forty-two (42).

I think it's because they read the two digits as single numbers: 15 56 45 is fifteen fifty-six forty-five. Whereas we read them as single digits regardless of how we mentally group them: one five five six four five.

Do you remember them as three digit numbers (one hundred and twenty-three) or triple digits (one two three)?

The pause is almost imperceptible, but it is there. It helps in france that all phone numbers are 10 digits long so any mistranscription is obvious. Whereas in the UK it's not always obvious if you've dropped or gained a digit.

Usually, groups of three and four. Phone numbers I do differently, depending on what country they're for.

This is all that's left of PI.

That's to demonstrate just how variable chunking can be, in a memory task.

Paul

I have a virtual mobile number for these, so they arrive in my E-Mail and can be cut+paste to their destination. No memory required! :-)

Depends what goldfish tendencies ye have.

You only have to "remember" it for a second, and if that's difficult you can bring up the SMS thingy on ya phone.

On an iPhone, the recently received number from SMS is a shortcut on the keyboard.

It may seem so but digit grouping that's easier to recall (which is what some people like to emphasise) is not the same as conventional digit grouping when you want to confirm you've understood a number.

For example, Three Mobile customer service is: 0 33333 8 1001

That may be handy to remember after you have heard it enough times but for a simple one-off confirmation it's messy because it breaks the usual rhythm when speaking such numbers.

Nor can you easily confirm it fits the usual landline format of 5+6 digits.

I prefer: 03333 381 001.

I don't register them as two specific three digit numbers.

I hear the digits when spoken and then recall the sound of their names all run together ("sixfivethree") without registering the group as a specific number.