Originally Posted by
madurobob
He was no hukster and there were no cheats. He was just well practiced at memorizing.
Indeed, he was.
Were I to attempt what your professor did, I would first require loads of special training and tons of practice. I'd need to study the special tricks that go along with picture memory and I'd need to rehearse my skills many times before ever attempting to try them on an unknown group of people like your professor did.
Contrast that type of memory skill with the one I mentioned upthread about learning the lyrics to a song. Many years ago I learned the lyrics to Frank Zappa's "Dumb All Over." To this day, I can recite the lyrics word for word without even thinking about it. I don't exactly know how many words are in the song but I can assure you it's way more than 52. The time needed to learn the lyrics is irrelevant. Maybe I learned them in an hour or maybe it took me three years. It doesn't matter. The skill I used is one that virtually all of us possess. Even a person with a less-than-average memory skillset has the ability to memorize a song without the need for special training or practice. Would you and Zooterkin agree with me that most people have the ability to memorize the lyrics to a song without needing to acquire special training and practice to do so?
Would you also agree with me that the two types of memory skills mentioned here, i.e. memorizing lyrics over any amount of time vs. memorizing the names, hometowns, and various other tidbits of thirty strangers to accurately recall within one hour, are different?
I would suggest they are different. I would further suggest the skills Mr. Karol uses in his card trick are closer to learning lyrics than they are to the more advanced skills of your professor. In other words, it wouldn't take much practice to do what Jim Karol did.