The Mathematics of Memory
The Mathematics of Memory
An Imitation of Form of Eula Biss’ “The Pain Scale”
An advanced fifth grade math class told me of the unique qualities of the number zero. Nothing can be divided by zero. There’s no way to carry out such an equation. I fantasized what it would be like if I could find a way.
I am sitting on a plane to New York, preparing myself to be coddled by parents, grandparents, and cousins, who have been counting down the days until my visit, and they’ve finally reached zero.
An underachiever in all other subjects, I excelled in math because of my ability to remember things through numbers, as though their values and patterns made up an alternative language.
Can zero be divided by zero? I think of this and ask my high school A.P. Calculus teacher. Her quirky response explains that black holes are where God divided by zero. I immediately imagine writing zero over zero on the next exam, and watching the equation animate to a swirling vacuum that sucks the surrounding scribbles and equations inside, leaving a blank page.
In a deck of cards, there is no zero. Each card has some worth. The closest suitable are the Jokers, which belong to no suit and are commonly discarded before a game is dealt.
The New York excursion is for my youngest cousin’s Bat Mitzvah, or “Bas Mitzvah,” as my Grandpa says it. It’s the last of this generation, and there is yet to be a Bar Mitzvah. Grandpa makes a regular joke at reunions like these. “Where are all the boys?” There are no grandsons. The Scharf family name stops here.
Any number over itself is one, except the infuriating zero.
My sister taught me fractions when I was little. I didn’t ask her to. She also liked to correct and poke fun at my childish mispronunciations. “Count-culator” made sense to me for the purpose it served, as well as “Old-timers.”
“It’s ‘Alzheimer’s,’ Lauren.” She had to write the word out for me before I caught my mistake.
An ace holds a discontinuous value in a deck of cards. Aces high means eleven. Aces low means one.
I was a year old when I took my first plane trip, once again to New York. I don’t remember a thing about it but home videos show the brown shag carpet and gold furniture in my grandparents’ house just as it all looks today. Nothing’s changed there.
My grandpa taught me how to gamble. I was the only first grader to recognize the checkers pieces as poker chips.
My favorite children’s game was Memory: a deck of cards, usually with pictures if meant for a younger age, is set up in rows and columns, face down, and turned up two at a time in an attempt to find a match. I was unbeatable. My parents and their friends were so impressed by how quick I was to recall a pair and pick up techniques. “You have to pick up the one you think it is before the one you’re sure of,” I would tip-off to my opponent.
Grandpa’s game is called 31. Much like 21 but with an extra card in each hand. Players take turns picking a card from the deck and discarding; if the top of the discard pile follows suit of the next player’s hand, they may pick that card instead, but forfeit the secrecy of their suit in hand.
The higher the card number, the higher its value. Face cards are ten. Aces are high.
No one ever picks a two from the discard pile. It’s not worth the risk, not to mention the subsequent mockery from other players.
“A deuce for my favorite Grandpa!” One of my favorite things about 31 is playing just ahead of my Grandpa so I can discard all of my worst and lowest cards, simply to catch the looks on his face.
Grandpa has my eyes; or I suppose I have his. They light up and widen when we’re caught by surprise, but squint into slits when we smile, more so if we’re laughing. His eyes are a little more hidden among wrinkles and behind a thick pair of bifocals.
Memory storage is marked by two stages: long term and short term. It’s difficult to draw a line between the two. How long is long and how short is short? My understanding is that the long term is for the firsts. First kiss, first pet, first day of kindergarten. While short term is for the lasts. Last night, last Tuesday, last book you read.
In one of her first games of 31, my sister jumped from the table and shouted “Thirty-two! Thirty-two!” She was convinced she had two aces of the same suit.
Thirty-one is the highest score you can get in 31 (fittingly). An ace and two tens, all one suit. This hand ends the round instantly and every player but the holder of 31 surrenders a chip to the middle. A player can also end the round by knocking with what they believe to be the highest hand, or at least not the lowest. The lowest hand must pay up.
My sister had two aces alright. One, hearts, the other, diamonds. We made her pay double.
Some experts separate memory storage into three stages, adding the “Sensory stage” to long term and short term. The sensory stage acts as a filter to determine what information will pass into short term, and perhaps eventually long term, or if it will be stored at all.
Information is only in this stage for a flash of a second, like an exposure to film. That kind of information, however, is preserved through a different medium.
One of my first vivid memories is of a day in preschool when my mom was late picking me up. I couldn’t tell time but I knew when the hands formed an “L” pointing to the number three, my mom was due to walk through the door.
This was most likely not the first time she ran behind, but it was the first time I noticed. I developed a tickle in my throat, and as the angle of that “L” turned more acute, the tickle progressed to more of a scratch. I wanted my mommy. At three years old, this was the first time I would recognize a common sickness coming over me.
My family took a trip to Rhode Island when I was three. My mom had to tell me that; I had no recollection of being in Rhode Island. To me it was just another trip to the east coast to see family. When on the beach I saw my grandpa’s jolly sized belly and asked why he had an inny belly button while I had an outty. He told me it was to make a nice home for the spiders that lived in there. That, I remember.
The most infuriating hand to pick up in 31 is three tens, each a different suit. Thirty points altogether yet the hand is valued only at ten. The first card I pick up from the deck determines what I’m collecting. A couple times, this has been a fourth ten of the remaining suit. At some point, I’ll have no choice but to discard a high card, reluctantly assisting my opponents.
I’m not the best at Memory anymore. Ever since a childhood friend became the first to beat me, I’ve been on something of a cognitive decline. We lost touch years ago, but I remember her birthday was four days before mine.
Many fail to see the pattern in dates, which are frequently the first details to fade from memory, despite that each presents its own reminder in the form of a reoccurring anniversary.
They also separate into four seasons.
All of the cousins and I were born in summer; six birthdays fitting perfectly from late June to early September.
Memory retrieval in the human mind is broken up into four common components: verbal recall, aural recall, visual recall, and tactile recall.
Retrieval through speaking, retrieval through hearing, retrieval through seeing, and retrieval through touching or writing.
Numerical recall is perhaps too rare or vague to classify.
Grandpa’s birthday is in March. My dad says he’s 88 years old, but I don’t think he’s remembering correctly. Like father, like son.
The four suits of a traditional deck of playing cards are spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts.
These suits originated from the French style of playing cards and, while not the first, they were the cheapest to manufacture, and thus the most popular.
Other countries alter, slightly, the name and appearance of certain suits. For instance, clubs are acorns in Germany and Italo-Spanish or Latin decks have cups in lieu of hearts. These discrepancies are mostly found in cartomancy, or tarot cards.
Whatever the icon, each suit follows a pattern rooted in the feudal system: Spades for nobility, clubs for peasants, diamonds for merchants, and hearts for members of the clergy.
The suits also consistently associate with riches and romance, adversity and agriculture. Can you find each match?
The four elements, earth, water, fire, and air tie into the four suits as well, though this pattern is more obscure and it is arguable which suit belongs to which element.
When my dad told me of the changes in conversation with my grandpa, how he asks the same questions every five minutes, I shrugged it off as a natural consequence of aging. I’ll believe it when I hear it for myself.
My memory runs on aural recall.
Some card decks hold five different suits, the fifth tying in the classical element Aether, a void or space, dark matter, pertaining to the space above the terrestrial sphere.
In mythology, Aether is the open sky where only the gods live and the pure air which only the gods breathe; heaven.
Aristotle names Aether as the fifth element but noted that it lacked the qualities of the other four in that it could be neither hot, cold, wet, nor dry, and its only recordable change was in density.
An estimated 5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. By 2050, the number is expected to hit 13.4 million.
Almost 60% of Americans think Alzheimer’s is genetic.
Like eyes, or a smile, or a family name.
No matter how random they may seem in the world of arithmetic, numbers consistently go hand in hand with formula. Strategy requires such a pattern to ease the task of memorization. This is how some people are able to memorize Pi to a thousand digits, if they really have the time and patience to do so.
My sixth grade locker combination was 24-6-42. Two plus four equals six minus four equals two.
The combination of my locker in 12th grade is a blur.
Seven is my lucky number, which sounds very cliché, but I picked it for my favorite month, which has my birthday, July. The 10th of July if you’d like to remember it.
Seventeen is my sister’s lucky number, chosen, I think, for the day her birthday falls on. But then her name also has seventeen letters. Then again so does mine.
Therapies show that keeping the brain engaged with patterns and puzzles delays (though does not prevent) memory loss and confusion.
All these years Grandpa was teaching the family how to gamble, I should have explained to him the grids and patterns and tips and tricks I found in Memory.
Just a reminder, my birthday is the 10th of July. Seven/ten. Seven plus ten is seventeen. Seventeen letters are in my name. If you didn’t remember it before, perhaps you will now.
Alzheimer’s starts in patients when certain forms of the gene apolipoprotein E, or ApoE, promote the formation of an abnormal amyloid precursor protein, or APP. APP clumps together to form plaques that break down tau proteins, whose purpose it is to stabilize a neuron’s structural integrity. Once broken down, the neuron dies, leaving a hole that disrupts the electrical signals traveling among the nerve.
Tau ÷ (APP × ApoE) = x over zero. I found it.
When film is overexposed, it processes as a white, almost heavenly void or space.
Not only is there no cure for Alzheimer’s, but there’s also no way to test absolutely positive for the disease until an autopsy is performed. I think that’s a bit too late.
Unlike a three year old with a sore throat, my Grandpa is 88, give or take, and he doesn’t know if he’s sick.
Screenings, recall tests, and family member reports promise 80 to 90 percent accuracy.
I once read about a photographer who developed a journal documenting the final three years of his father’s life. The old man lacked all short term memory storage and would ask his son over and over where his mother was, as though no one told him of her death.
Tired of watching his father’s heart break again and again, the photographer joined the game of pretend, and told his father she’d simply gone to Paris to join the circus. The pretending continued until the father’s death at ninety-nine.
Once parties and brunches that follow the very last Bat Mitzvah die down, the family finally gets a chance to crowd around the kitchen table for a good old game of 31.
“Where are all the boys?” He asks this more and more these days. I want to think that he believes it’s funnier with repetition, but part of me wonders if maybe he doesn’t remember asking just minutes before. Another part wonders, and worries, if he’s really not sure of whether or not he has grandsons.
They’ve gone to Paris and joined the circus, Grandpa.
Grandpa knocks with the confident gambler’s attitude he’ll probably always have.
The family each takes one last turn before we reveal our hands.
Grandpa has three tens; thirty. However his hand is only worth ten. He’s forgotten the suits.
This game, this last game, goes in my long term memory.
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