5/1/2023 0 Comments Magic number 7![]() ![]() National Insurance numbers, bank account numbers etc work on the same principle xx-xx-xx-xx (four groups of numbers). So we actually remember 10 numbers by breaking it into groups of three. If it is longer then we add an area code. We remember the first group of three and then the other grouping of four numbers. We don’t really remember “seven” numbers. We remember phone numbers by their aspects of 2 or more groupings. However when more attributes were included, then we can remember more, depending upon our familiarity and the complexity of the subject (Remember in Miller’s original research, there was only one aspect, the tone). Miller found this to be true of a number of other tasks. After about five or six tones, subjects began to get confused, and their capacity for making further tone judgements broke down. Each tone was presented separately, and the subject was asked to identify each tone relative to the others she had already heard, by assigning it a number. Millers work was based on subjects listening to a number of auditory tones that varied only in pitch. Miller himself stated that his magic number was for items with one aspect or attribute. This is the number of items which is thought can be held in short term memory at any one time. Applying a range of +two or -two, the number seven became known as Miller’s Magic Number Seven (7☒). This range is conveniently the number seven, which has long held ‘an interest’ for people. In 1956, George Miller’s study identified that the amount of information which can be remembered on one exposure is between five and nine items, depending on the information. The research was never intended for this application, nor indeed to limit functionality. ![]() This is just a fallacy which appears to have entered the ergonomic designers world – and not we are all inflected with it in inappropriate times and places. Some parts of our world seem to have taken the magic number seven to mean a limit or structure, indeed if you look in much of the IT world many of the menus and options are grouped in seven’s or near sevens. The use of the magic 7± has been used as fact by many trainers, instructors and other ‘educators’ without understanding, indeed it is thrown as a fact rather than as a piece of a model of learning or cognitive thinking capacity. Much has been quoted about Millers Magical Seven, before we explore the basics on this page you may wish to read the original article: Miller’s Magical Seven This was the number seven plus or minus two (7☒). Miller in 1956 (“The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”) Miller showed a number of remarkable coincidences between the channel capacity of a number of human cognitive and perceptual tasks.
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