Millerâs magical number was 7 chunks.
Chunking: It is estimated that the human Short-term memory process can take in information at about 2 bits per second. That is interesting, but not too helpful from a practical stand-point.
What is more practical is Millerâs magical number 7. This suggests that ãperceptualä Short-term memory can handle 7 ãchunksä of information at one time.
Through special organization, we can increase the amount of information in each chunk.
The phone company put this into use when first they limited phone numbers to 7 digits (for example 6772828); and then broke it up into two chunks (viz. 677 2828) and later three (viz. 818, 677 2858).
Mnemonic devices are another form of chunking. Suppose one had to remember a useless array of 9 letters, for example:
It would be a bit of a pain.