Chunking

This article is about 'chunking'. Here is the background for the concept:

A typical person can listen to a short list of items and then say the list back correctly;

but, when the list reaches a certain size, there is too much information to keep track of and error or forgetfulness happens. For instance, mobile phone numbers are long and you would not expect someone to be able to memorise a new mobile phone number and say it back, on hearing it just once. However, a local Swansea phone number of 6 digits should be no problem for most people.

Interestingly, a chimpanzee can memorise a list of 5 digits! Tetsuro Matsuzawa demonstrated this with a chimpanzee named Ai, and it seems that Ai taught the skill to its son Ayumu.

The area of memory where that temporary list of items or number digits lives is what I would call 'working memory'. Some people are more gifted than others with their working memory;

some academics claim that particular exercises (physical or mental) can help to boost or maintain a good working memory.

Let's say that a typical person has a working memory limit of 5 to 9 items. Does that mean that a small minority of individuals could memorise, in a short time, a number of more than 9 digits? The answer is 'no'. The trick is to define list items which represent 2-digit numbers. For instance, the mug which I received on my 18th birthday, wih 18 written on it, might be used to represent a sequence of 1 and then 8. In my working memory, I am aware of 1 item but I have a prepared method for translating that one item into two digits!

This allows a human being, with a trained memory, to make a great leap in memory ability. For instance, Akira Haraguchi set a world record for reciting pi to 100000 digits after the decimal point.

Chunking is this process of compressing many pieces of information into one item. In memory competitions, this is one of the principles applied in order to allow, for instance, a long sequence of binary to be memorised.

Further Reading:

Akira Haraguchi - Memorised pi to 100,000 places!

George A. Miller - Psychology work on how many items a person can remember.

Chunking - Chunking article