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Subject:Phone numbers and 7 plus or minus two From:geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA Date:Thu, 5 Sep 1996 09:29:25 -0500
William Newkirk (as far as I can figure from the e-mail
header) corrected my comments that "phone numbers were
chosen as 7 digits because this fits Miller's 7 plus or
minus 2 discovery".
What I _should_ have said is that _local_ numbers follow
the seven-digit pattern. Numbers outside North America
deviate from this pattern, but still fit within the range
of 5-9 digits that Miller proposed. Of course, if you know
about the trick of grouping single digits into larger
numbers for ease of memorisation, you can represent a
complete 10-digit phone number as three numbers (area code,
prefix, number), not 10.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)} geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.
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