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I’m generally very bad with names, and especially struggle when I’m quickly introduced to large numbers of people. Generally I’d just throw up my hands and resign myself to awkward conversations attempting to remember someone’s name.
But I’ve been on an Anki binge recently, and also was recently accepted into MATS 9 (which started on the 5th of January 2026). So I used Anki to memorise most of the names and faces of the cohort before the first day and it was incredibly successful; I’ll certainly be doing it again. If you’re a MATS scholar and would like the Anki deck, let me know!
Creating the deck
This ended up being very easy, MATS had already asked the scholars to volunteer a profile photo, name, and short bio for use in an Airtable which was shared with all of us.
Note: I’d feel very weird if I were doing this without knowing that MATS had created an opt-in face book, with the purpose of introducing everyone to one another.
After some back and forth, Claude gave me some JavaScript to paste into the console which would download all photos and text into a form amenable for Anki import. Claude also guided me on where to put the photos and how to import the CSV into the Anki app which was all very quick. I did spend a little time to crop everyone’s photos to just be their head, to remove background features that might be easier to memorise than someone’s face.
What worked well
- Even just knowing how someone’s name is spelt is a massive help for me. Especially with unusual names that I haven’t heard before, if I’ve seen their name written down it’s a lot easier for me to recall than if I’m trying to memorise an arbitrary string of syllables.
- I’m writing this on the third day of MATS, and I feel like I know most of the cohort already. This isn’t really true, we’ve only known each other for two days, but it’s significantly better than being panic-stricken as you see someone approaching you whose name you’ve forgotten.
- It’s a lot easier to organise outings, meetings, group discussions, trips to Yosemite, etc, since I know most people’s names and can spend effort remembering who likes what, who’d be interested in which groups, and who I should introduce to whom due to shared interest XYZ.
- After spending the full day with the cohort, I got to actually talk to lots of the cohort and this made recalling their names a lot easier. People who I had previously confused due to similar-sounding names became very easy to distinguish, because their personalities were so different.
- I’ve got a much better idea of who’s in the cohort (and would probably be open to a random discussion) and who’s just hanging out at Lighthaven (and probably wants to work or might be interesting to talk to). The MATS scholars have never been in the same room at once, so it’s remarkably tricky to get a feel for the size of the whole group.
- I certainly feel like I learnt far more names on the first day than I would have without Anki. At previous similar events, I’d be lucky to properly remember 6 to 8 people’s names, but I’m pretty sure I learnt 10 to 15 new names yesterday (and this I attribute to Anki).
Failures and Problems
- Definitely not perfect: writing this on the morning of day 2, there’s certainly a minority of people who I recognise but can’t recall the names of.
- I didn’t memorise everyone before day 1: I didn’t get to full recall by the first day, but even knowing ~25% of names was a massive help, making it easier to spend effort memorising the names of people I hadn’t yet learnt.
- Overfitting on profile pictures: Since I only had a single picture for each person, my brain would often overfit on the easy-to-see features in the individual photos, instead of on the person’s face. For example, I could feel my brain latching onto a distinctive background or hair style, instead of their facial features. I initially thought this would be a big problem, but in practice it’s fine. Most of the time I wasn’t overfitting, and the times when I did overfit, I still had an approximate recollection of their face so I was certainly no worse off.
- Changes between profile pictures and real life: People change, get new hair cuts or shave their beard, or just take photos in unusual lighting. Most of the time this isn’t an issue, but sometimes it’s confusing. But I never felt worse-off for having memorised someone’s name, and already having allocated them space in my head often helps me remember their name.
- Different given names: Some people don’t go by their “official” name and prefer to be called by something else. This is occasionally confusing but not a massive issue.
Looking forward
I’m hoping that repeatedly memorising lots of names will improve my ability in general to recall names. Hopefully Anki can give data about this in the future, in which case I might make a follow-up post. I’ll absolutely be using this technique for future large events or mixers.