magical number seven

n. "The Magical Number Seven" is the title of the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller's influential paper, which estimated the amount of information which can be held in short-term memory (a memory that lasts less than 30 seconds). He estimated that most humans' short-term memory can hold between five and nine pieces of information. These can be individual letters (e.g., R, G, W, H, D, Y, Q, C, I) or "chucks"（e.g., CIA, FBI, CSI, NSA). Chucking information into meaningful units can greatly increase the number of letters remembered, but still only five to nine chucks is typically remembered. Hence, the "magic number seven" is a durable estimate of the number of meaningful pieces of information that can be maintained within short-term memory.

- DGr