What's the best proven way to memorize information, whether

Method of Loci

>>9159348
Probably spaced repition with a tool like Mnemosyne or equivalent.

>>9159348

I play quizzes on sporcle frequently and have memorized or internalized the following:

countries of the world
flags of the world
periodic table
-dozens of other lists of geographical information

I'm fairly good at memorization, is my point, though it can be a dull activity of course. Depending on the information to be memorized, I've noticed a few things that work for me:

-divide and conquer. Break a large list of information down into like 2-5 things at a time, based on each small group having some definite relationship to each other that the rest don't have. Get that one figured out and drill it a bit, then keep going. You know you've got everything in "that" group once you've counted up to 3,4,5, whatever it happens to be (you store this number as well).

Example: what are the five african countries right around Lake Victoria (a great big lake) in east africa? Answer: Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi. CONTEXT: note the generally vowel-ending african-sounding names of each one. Rwanda was that place where they had that big genocide in the Clinton years. Uganda had Idi Amin, and Kenya is known to be relatively stable by African standards.

The latter notes lead me to my next point: contextualize. Give it at least one other connection to something else that you know or have heard about in life. In the above case, I "personify" the countries, by relating them to news coverage-one-line history that I know. Take Americium, an obscure actinide in the periodic table: this is the stuff in a smoke detector that makes the thing go off when there's too much smoke. That's literally the only other thing I know about it.

A third possibility deserves greater exploitation and should actually be taught, if not having specific examples given in class: The Dirty Mnemonic. Years ago, a comedy program gave the following:

Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species: Please Come Over For Gay Sex

I have never forgotten it since.

>>9159348
Information compression, usually.

Fantasy and imagination.

This is the latest science btw.

Jay z says repeat it 18 times in a row

>>9159348
Anon enlighten me on spaced retrieval, it's a scientifically proven technique for retaining information over time

>>9152326
here there is the post and public research supporting spaced retrieval