{"id":62,"date":"2019-08-20T18:20:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T18:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/?p=62"},"modified":"2019-08-20T18:20:53","modified_gmt":"2019-08-20T18:20:53","slug":"do-you-know-where-you-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/2019\/08\/20\/do-you-know-where-you-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Do You Know Where You Are?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do You Know Where You Are?<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Steven Gollmer<\/p>\n

How many numbers can you memorize?\u00a0 Have you tried it recently?\u00a0 As a freshman in college, I met a student from Chicago who participated in Pi Day competitions by memorizing digits of the mathematical constant \u03c0.\u00a0 (By the way, as of the writing of this article, the Guinness World Record is held by Lu Chao of China, 67,890 digits.)\u00a0 As attested by my wife, numbers go in and out of my mind with few sticking long term.\u00a0 Cell phones are both a blessing and a curse with regard to this.\u00a0 I don’t have to remember phone numbers, but what happens when I don’t have my phone or it dies suddenly?\u00a0 Instead of phone numbers, what if I am trying to memorize my location using Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates?<\/p>\n

In 1974 Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas provided a solution to my problem.\u00a0 In chapter 10 of The Memory Book<\/em> they associate the digits 1 through 0 to phonetic sounds.\u00a0 To memorize a number you string the associated phonetic sounds together to form words and sentences.\u00a0 Vowels are freely substituted in, where necessary, to make the sentence work.\u00a0 The authors find that people remember words and concepts much easier than they do abstract digits.<\/p>\n

This philosophy is applied to GPS coordinates by the company What3words (https:\/\/what3words.com\/<\/a>).\u00a0 Instead of using the digits reported by your phone’s GPS sensor, What3words breaks the earth’s surface into 57 trillion squares.\u00a0 Each of these squares is 3 meters by 3 meters, or 10 feet for us in America.\u00a0 It then assigns a combination of three words to each square.\u00a0 This requires the use of 40,000 address words.\u00a0 The What3words address for a location is formatted as follows: \/\/\/sorry.sorry.sorry.\u00a0 This puts you in Manahawkin, New Jersey.\u00a0 More specifically, it puts you in a forest near the Garden State Parkway.\u00a0 From Google Earth, the associated GPS coordinate is 39.71054 N, 74.27458 W.\u00a0 Lorayne and Lucas could make a game out of finding the most memorable phrase for these coordinates, but I find three words much easier.<\/p>\n

To get 40,000 address words, What3words uses nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, as well as, plural and past tense forms.\u00a0 If you don’t want to use English, What3words supports 35 languages.\u00a0 The words forming an address are random so \/\/\/sorry.sorry.sorry is not near \/\/\/worry.sorry.sorry.\u00a0 This is by design so that a partially remembered address may be corrected using additional data like “it should be in Indiana.”\u00a0 This is no different than reporting to the police a partial license plate number along with the description that the vehicle was a green Mustang.<\/p>\n

What3words came to my attention through a BBC article (https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-england-49319760<\/a>).\u00a0 It sparked enough interest for me to download the app and try it out.\u00a0 I don’t know if it will catch on or just be another technological novelty, but I hope it is the former.\u00a0 Maybe we can discuss it some time if I happen to bump into you at 9:55 near \/\/\/luggage.glassy.exhibitions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do You Know Where You Are? By Steven Gollmer How many numbers can you memorize?\u00a0 Have you tried it recently?\u00a0 As a freshman in college, I met a student from Chicago who participated in Pi Day competitions by memorizing digits of the mathematical constant \u03c0.\u00a0 (By the way, as of the writing of this article,… View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/63"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}