Max, Week 15 - Free Geoguessr Lesson
So we had this Calc BC mock test last weekend, and there was a ton of questions on Taylor and Mclaurin and whatever series. I genuinely just can’t remember them no matter how hard I try. I stared at them this entire morning while eating breakfast and I still was not 100% sure about them on our math test today.
But you know what I can remember?
ALL THE DIFFERENT POLES AND STICKS THAT YOU FIND IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES!!!! Just kidding. I don’t know most of them (I used to remember most of them when I played Geoguessr for a living) but I seem to have an easier time remembering these in comparison to math formulas. It’s a little annoying that I can’t memorize the things I NEED to memorize but the poles and sticks from Geoguessr just seem to implant themselves in my brain.
For example, Polish poles have these types of round oval holes in their poles. And Hungary and Romania also have large holes in their poles (Romania’s are often painted white on the bottom), but they are larger than the Polish holes. And Mexican poles are often octagon-shaped.
And for the sticks on the ground, the Polish sticks are white with a red diagonal reflector. And the Icelandic sticks are yellow with a white diagonal reflector. And the poles in Australia are white with a red rectangle that DOESN’T touch the sides, while the poles in New Zealand are white with a red rectangle that DOES touch the sides.
In order from left to right: Polish stick, Icelandic stick, Australian stick, New Zealand stick.
There’s a lot more you can memorize—the road lines, the driving side, the Google car that you can see in different countries, etc. And memorizing these different specificities is pretty fun!
You’re welcome for the free Geoguessr lesson! If one day you find yourself waking up randomly in a foreign land, maybe you will know that you are in Norway and not Sweden because the sticks on the ground have grey rectangles and not white rectangles. And then you can find your way home from there!
MAX, I was hoping to never hear of that Calc BC mock test ever again. I do not think I did very well on that power series FRQ. Nevertheless, thank you for that GeoGuesser lesson Max. I genuinely am astonished by people like Rainbolt who can look at an image for a second or two and pinpoint the exact country, region, and sometimes the city in which the photo was taken at. Although I am terrible at GeoGuesser, I did have a similar experience during a phase in which I memorized hundreds of flags of countries I had not even heard of previously. Good luck on the actual Calc BC test (along with the AP test for this class)!
ReplyDeleteOhmygosh Max I read the first paragraph of your blog and almost clicked exit thinking it was about calc. But I’m glad I continued reading and found out it was about pole designs instead! Before reading this blog, I didn’t think that countries outside the U.S. would vary in pole designs and never really noticed the difference when I visited other countries but it’s cool to see that they actually have pretty distinct differences. Thank you for adding the pole images from Romania, Hungary, Poland, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and Iceland along with your explanations! If I ever find myself waking up in a foreign land, this information will save my life i guess. It’s kind of funny that you acquired all these information from playing a game. Would you say that playing Geoguessr when you were younger helped to train your memorization and cognitive skills? Also please let me know if you have any tips on unit 9&10. Bye!
ReplyDeleteHey Max!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog this week. It was funny how you connected Calc to GeoGuessr, but I can really relate. I’m currently studying for the AP Bio test next Monday, and I keep forgetting things that I already learned. However, I still remember that if you jump in and out of a boat while falling down from a cliff in Minecraft, the boat can travel further distances compared to if you aren’t hopping in and out fast. I wish we could choose memories to keep and memories to forget. It’s like my brain ran out of storage, so it’s getting rid of GB of storage to put new info in, but however I can’t choose the info going in and out. I never knew that you were that good at Geoguessr, and maybe we should play sometime (I'm so bad). Thanks for the free Geoguessr lesson, and see you tomorrow! Good luck on your AP tests as well!
-Colin
Hi Max,
ReplyDeleteI thought your blog article about GeoGuessr was really creative and relatable. I can definitely relate to your experience of memorizing stuff that is less essential to my academic success such as details about games like GeoGuessr and struggling with memorizing important details such as the Taylor/Maclaurin Series. I think a good strategy for remembering these details is deeply understanding the concepts surrounding them, so less memorization is required and it’s more about truly having a grasp about the concepts at hand. However, I can definitely agree with you that remembering some details can be quite difficult no matter how much time you spend on it. For rote memorization, I feel that just writing the thing you want to memorize over and over again is an effective (though painful) strategy for this. I also thought that the details you shared regarding the different styles of poles/sticks in foreign countries was really interesting, since this isn’t usually something that I think about.
Thanks,
Ritwik