About how much information are we keeping in working memory at a given moment?
"Miller's Law" dictates that the number of things humans can hold in working memory is "the magical number 7±2". This idea is derived from Miller's experiments, which tested both random-access memory (where participants must remember call-response pairs, and give the correct response when prompted with a call) and sequential memory (where participants must memorize and recall a list in order). In both cases, 7 is a good rule of thumb for the number of items people can recall reliably.[1]
Miller noticed that the number of "things" people could recall didn't seem to depend much on the sorts of things people were being asked to recall. A random numeral contains about 3.3 bits of information, while a random letter contains about 4.7; yet people were able to recall about the same number of numerals or letters.
Miller concluded that working memory should not be measured in bits, but rather in "chunks"; this is a word for whatever psychologically counts as a "thing".
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D97xnoRr6BHzo5HvQ/one-minute-every-moment
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