[Baron Munchausen]

Short-term memory deals with 4-5 objects at a time. This has been verified by extensive psychological testing. Think of trying to remember phone numbers, addresses, etc. You can't handle more than 4 or 5 in short-term memory without losing track of something. That's why phone numbers were organized as they were, btw, in little Groups. It makes many numbers into larger 'chunks' data. Committing information to long-term memory is a different matter, of course, but that takes time.

This is a completely different thing from comprehension of numbers in the abstract. It's certainly true that larger numbers get more and more difficult to truly understand. But the cut-off is not quite as abrupt, or as small, as the number 4.

[ July 26, 2003, 23:24: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]