Roger Lustig

Message for Mr Fagliano: The clue for 4 down in today's mini is based on several myths. First: the "seven" story goes back to an academic article by George Miller in the 1950s, titled "The Magic Number Seven--plus or minus two". It noted that most people could repeat betweenn 5 and 9 random digits read to them rapidly. Later research showed that this is a function of the "phonological loop," a section of the mind's language-processing capabities that keeps the most recent 2 seconds or so of heard speech in the forefront of memory. As a result, Chinese has a "magic number" of 9, plus or minus 2, because Chinese digits can be spoken very rapidly. For Welsh, the number is 6. That phone numbers have 7 digits is utterly unrelated to this. First, they haven't always had 7--and with an area code required in overlay areas, they have 10 nowadays. In other countries, the number of digits is variable! My folks in Germany had a 5-digit number with a 4-digit area code. My sister lives in a big city with a 2-digit area code. Her phone number has 6 digits; the fax number, 8. So, ultimately the "magic number 7" story boils down to what one retains from the most recent 2 seconds of speech--and nothing else.