JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I’ve written a number of posts on this site about W. Stanley Jevons, a very talent all-around smart-guy who worked in many different fields and at very high levels.  Today’s installment on the Jevons’ from is his paper “The Power of Numerical Discrimination”, published in the third year of Nature, and published in London in 1871. Jevons contributes a rather odd bit here on the success of the brain to correctly formulate an accurate memory when shown a number of items. That is to say, when shown a certain group of X-number of items instantaneously and then removed, how often will the mind be able to remember the correct number upon recall (and without committing them to memory per se or counting them?) In this odd and fascinating study Jevons records not only right/wrong answers but how ‘close” the remembered fit is to the original number. Pretty cool, and an early effort towards understanding our abilities and limits in information processing.  

See the rest of the article here.