Comment on What do you think is the largest number a human can actually grasp / truly comprehend?
splendoruranium@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
10k? 100k? A million?
I am not talking about calculating with numbers, but rather the point where numbers stop being comprehensible, or “no longer mean anything”.
Try visualizing exactly 10000 apples in your mind.
You’re quite optimistic. I recall from old Psych classes that visualization breaks down even before double digits, so the 5-7 range. Don’t have any references at hand so I might be misremembering it, but now I’m curious too and see if I can find anything in my notes.
7 sounds about right. When I see a number of stuff in front of me I can quickly grasp how many there are up to about 7. 8 already becomes two fours. 9 is 3x3 or 4+5 depending on how the objects are clustered.
Though I think I can estimate up to about a thousand. Usually by comparing to stuff I have already seen in that ballpark.
I got about 50000k but I’m in local politics
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This is how I visualize up to 16. Don’t think I can go any higher though
adespoton@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
As an average, I usually see the number 7 bandied around. After that we start “chunking” where each group becomes its own conceptual object.
This is why phone numbers without the area code have 7 digits in North America.
Neuromancer49@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
That’s not quite the same thing - the 7 digit phone number has more to do with short-term memory capacity than visual perception. Miller’s Law of short-term memory is we can store 7 +/- 2 items at a time, depending how complex they are.
…wikipedia.org/…/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_o…