Try it out: Chunking helps memory

Read these numbers:

2 1 9 3 0 2 3 6 5 5 9 2 8 1 0 2

Now, cover them up and see how many of them you can remember in order.

Most people cannot remember more than 7 of the numbers, and it can be hard to even remember 4 or 5 of them.

Now, read these numbers, thinking of them as years:

1 9 7 6 2 0 0 3 2 0 3 1 1 8 4 2

Now, cover them up and see how many of them you can remember in order.

Most people now find it much easier to remember at least 7 or 8 of the numbers, and many people can remember at least 12 of them, many more than they could remember in the first list.

This is the phenomenon of chunking. When you group information into a meaningful unit you can remember it better.

The same thing can happen with words. If you don’t know the meaning of words, or they are all in a jumble, they can be very hard to remember. But if you know the meaning of them and they make sense in a sentence, they become easier to remember.

So the next time you want to remember more, try to cluster the information into a meaningful unit!