Re: The Myth of Seven, Plus or Minus Two

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

Steven Jong <SteveFJong -at- comcast -dot- net> wrote on 12/03/2003 08:03:52 AM:
> I'm a supporter of the Miller principle across many areas of
> information design, and I wanted to point out that to me, the cited
> article was not persuasive. It argued by assertion that
> Miller's work doesn't apply today, without saying why.

The problems are that this subject has been beaten to death a thousand times (
http://members.shaw.ca/philip.sharman/myth.html) and that Miller himself isn't a
big supporter of many of the ways that his work was interpreted.
(http://members.shaw.ca/philip.sharman/miller.txt)

    "7 was a limit for the discrimination of unidimensional stimuli (pitches,
      loudness, brightness, etc.) and also a limit for immediate recall, neither
      of which has anything to do with a person's capacity to comprehend printed
      text."

It's not a question that the research nolonger applies. It never applied in the
first place.

Einstein said it best: "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any
simpler."

Eric L. Dunn
Senior Technical Writer



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