Memory

I can tell you my first driver’s license number, many of my former and current credit card numbers, the name of my first crush in elementary school, and the secret recipe for our family’s favorite pancakes. That information, encoded long ago, can come to mind with ease. But when I get myself ready to walk out the door to run errands, I’ll find myself standing in a room not knowing what I came in there to do or, once in the car, realizing I left the overdue library books sitting next to the front door. This is my working memory playing tricks on me.
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When an early elementary student can recite all of the single-digit multiplication facts, a typical response is, “Wow, that kid is really good at math!” I was that student. I could finish the two-minute multiplication fact exercises with time to spare, and I could recite formulas within hours of seeing them the first time. I could also (almost) flawlessly reproduce any algorithm our teacher showed us in class that day. It was in college that I learned that memorizing all these facts, formulas, definitions, algorithms, and more is not all that is involved in mathematics. It was a hard lesson. I realized that even though I was good at memorization, I had to do more than that to do the mathematics I was now facing. Even then, memorization and recall of information played a huge role.

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