the reason that next week's workshop is called more memory tricks is because

i know a lot of tricks

and i can't get them all in one workshop so more of the same next week

if you find today's workshop helpful which i hope you do

and you're able to come back next week that would be great 'cause that way you get sort

of the full teaching on this

if you're not able to make it next week and this is the only one you come to hopefully

you'll still get something good

my first thing that i'm gonna do with you today

is to show you hopefully the power of that word

the word tricks

i gave a workshop last week called how to remember for tests so that was the first memory

workshop but for this one

what i want you to try to uh... understand and sort of value

is the fact that if you learn tricks or shortcut ways

to do things

it makes it so much easier to memorize lots of things for school

and it makes your memory look even better than it is now

and i'm hoping it's pretty good to very good but it makes it look even better and so most

of you have probably seen magic tricks performed before uh... either in person or on t_v_

and if somebody is a good magician

and they do uh... trick and you watch carefully and try to figure out how they

move the elephant from there to there or cut someone in half and put them back together

if they're good

you can't figure out how they did it and your mouth

drops open wow

but if you find out how they do the trick

and you realize ah it's just a cute little trick and then you see

the magic trick again

it's not so special anymore because the magic is gone

well i want to show you two things to start with and i'm actually gonna do this

next week too this is like your mental warm up before i get to the

main teaching

uh... i don't know what your attitude is toward

math

some people love math

some people okay

and some people hate math with a passion

i ran into a former student today and i said how are your classes going this semester she

said fine except math

and that's how she says math

and so if that's you

you're gonna learn something here if you like math great a few of you might have seen this

before but again it's not to teach you math as much as it is to show you the power of

tricks ok so i'm just going take a few minutes with this and then we'll move into the main a section

of the

workshop okay

if i ask you to do this problem which i don't want you to do actually but if i asked

you to do this on paper

this is thirty five times what

thirty-five

now even if math is your weakest subject if you wrote down that problem and you did the

problem i think everyone here could come up with the right answer you know it's not that

difficult

but if i told you

that you could actually

do this kind of problem

in two or three seconds

in your head

most people even if they're not great at math would think

uh... boy

you don't know my mind i can't do something like that but if you know the trick it's easy ok

so here's how it works

when you have a two-digit number that ends in five and you want to square it or multiply it by itself

all you have to do is one simple thing and that is

look at the first number which in this case is three

multiply it by one more than that so

this is tough math what's one more than three

what's three times four

twelve that's pretty easy right well twelve and then

you do one more thing

and that is stick the number twenty five on the end

and then you're done that's it

one thousand two hundred and twenty-five is the answer

people when i show them that they say

wait a minute but how did you

and you know what i always say who cares

as long as it works you don't even have to know why it works it just does so if i give you

sixty-five squared

you're supposed to be able to know how to do that quickly unless i've lost you over here

which is ok

it's six times seven which is

forty-two and then

twenty five

okay and that's it

when

i show this to people also and they learn how to do it and they think wow that's fast you

know that's good one thing that they ask is

does this work with all numbers

and my answer to that is no

if it worked with all numbers we would all be math majors right 'cause this is really

easy but there are a lot of other math tricks a lot of them and i'm gonna show you one more

in a minute but here's what i wanted to to tell you

um... i have actually had

students try this before and whether you do this or not is up to you but it's kind

of

fun to experiment with it or try it and that's this

um... once somebody learns how to do this even if they don't understand why it works but

they just know the two little steps

very often i've had students go up later today to someone they know

family member

friend

classmates somebody and they walk up and they hand them a piece of paper and a pen or pencil

and they say this

and if you do this this is what i want you to say

i want you to choose a number

that is two digits and ends in five

and you square it on paper

and i'll do it

in my head

and we'll see who finishes faster

so in other words trying to show off your great math ability okay

so the person looks at you

and i've had people even do this with family members who knew they were bad at math

and this really blows the mind of somebody like that so they say okay two-digit number

that ends in five

they say yeah okay how about twenty five

and so they write the problem the way that it normally is written

by the time they finish writing the problem you should already know the answer

and they haven't even started figuring it out yet

what's the answer to that

yeah six twenty five 'cause it's two times three is six twenty five

so what you do

to impress them

is before they've even done anything you tell them the answer

but you don't say it like this

six twenty five

you have to have an attitude about it you see it this way

six twenty five

like come on give me something tough and they're going to look at you and they're going to

think

get out of here

and then they're gonna start

going through and doing the problem the normal way and then at the end they get the

same answer that you got

and they're going to look at you

i guarantee you and they're going to say

how'd you do that so fast

if they ask you

this is the only time i'm ever going to say this ever

lie

don't tell 'em

say this this is my favorite things say this i can't tell you how i do the problem like that so

quickly but

i've been lying in bed till two o'clock in the morning everynight learning to move the

numbers in my mind

and they'll look at you and go wow...

and they'll say wish i could be as good as you are

and then here's the hardest part you have a straight face no smiling or what ever you

look at 'em and say well

you keep working on it and maybe one day you'll be as brilliant as i am and that's hard for

you to say because you know that it's just a simple trick

but what they think when you're able to come up with something that fast is that you're

basically doing this

and you're doing all these

things and you're not doing any of that

well it's kinda nice

to be able to do something like this

and impress somebody ok now

if they ask you a day or two or three later if you see him again and they say

can't you tell me how you do those problems so fast i'm still thinking about that

go ahead and say all right i'll tell

and then show them this

and watch their great admiration of you just drop and they'll just look at you like they thought you

were special because it's not special but if you don't know how to do it

it looks fantastic okay so that's the idea with tricks and then i'm gonna to show you one other

really fast one

and then i want you to uh...

kinda get ready for the main teaching today i don't know how many of you have ever seen this

but it's even uh... more fun for me than the other one

if you're given this problem which is not hard to do it all but it just takes a little

while to get it done

if you know the trick you can do it one second

okay what's six plus two

eight

done you didn't even multiply anything

and it's a multiplication problem that's pretty odd ok

fifty-four times eleven

five plus four

and so it's five ninety four

so you can do that in one second and the other person still

du that

and you look so brilliant

okay and it's cuz you know the shortcut you know the trick ok so that's the idea and again

i'm going to give you a few more of those next week

some people have said can you do a whole workshop on math tricks

i should probably do that sometime i know a lot of them

one of the things that i love about this about these math tricks is sometimes when people

learn how to do em

and they show em to somebody and the other persons impressed

it's the first time in their life that they've ever felt power over numbers because they

hate math

and they start to kind of

get into it a little more well

one of these days maybe i'll do that

but for today the main thing that i want to do as i want to show you

uh... three specific things that have helped students to score higher on tests ok

first one

and this is kind of uh... the first of two similar ones is i'm gonna explain a little

bit about how acronyms can be used

to help you get better grades on tests

and uh...

the big key and i'll explain this more in a couple minutes is that acronyms normally are words

and they're made up of first letters of other words and all of you have used these before

in your life

but most people didn't even know what they were called and so i want to give you three

practical examples of how

these can help you under the pressure of a test

to remember everything that you're supposed to

okay the first one

is sort of a common

idea for an acronym and that's the word homes

and this word is a very common word that everybody here knows but actually

this is this great powerful memory trick

and it doesn't so much look like it when you see it but it is

this is a help in a geography class more than likely and it's to help a person to memorize

the five great lakes that are in and around the state of michigan

and memorizing five things for a test

no big deal

but if you had

a hundred other things that you had to learn

the trick is how can you stare at all of those when you're studying and then when you get

to the test remember em all wouldn't you may be forget one or forget two or forget three