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When in doubt about a number, make it less than 7, +/- 2. This is the number of things that a person may juggle in their head at once. It is given as a range because it varies with the individual, circumstances, and particular task at hand. The original source of this phrase seems to be [http://www.well.com/user/smalin/miller.html this paper] from 1956, by George A. Miller. An interesting point of the paper is that there are really multiple sevens: both our ability to distinguish information (bits in a chunk) and number of chunks that can be stored at once in short term memory. I had pretty much been lumping to the two together up until now. More recent theories suggest that the \x91real' number is [http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/46/ closer to four], with some mental tricks going on to increase our performance. The theory of [http://www.psy.ohio-state.edu/psy312/wm.html working memory] has a completely different mental structure. Under this model, seven or so just happens to be the number of things the mind can [http://www.ntu.ac.uk/soc/bscpsych/memory/w2.htm say to itself] in it's short term memory loop. While all of this speculation on the real mental processes is fascinating, 7 +/- 2 makes a good rule of thumb for games, in much the same way as one drives a car without understanding the gory details of the internal combustion engine. ---- CategoryGoodIdea
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