{"id":7423,"date":"2005-03-09T08:54:37","date_gmt":"2005-03-09T15:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/03\/09\/losing-track.html"},"modified":"2005-03-09T08:54:37","modified_gmt":"2005-03-09T15:54:37","slug":"losing_track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/03\/09\/losing_track.html","title":{"rendered":"Losing track"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting article on problem complexity and how the human brain tries to cope with it<\/a> — and, eventually, when it cannot.<\/p>\n

According to University of Queensland cognitive science researchers Graeme S. Halford, Rosemary Baker, Julie E. McCredden and John D. Bain of Griffith University, the number of individual variables we can mentally handle while trying to solve a problem (like baking a lemon meringue pie) is relatively small: Four variables are difficult; five are nearly impossible.<\/p>\n

To keep test subjects from breaking down problems into bite-size chunks, researchers needed to create problems that they weren’t familiar with. In their experiment, 30 academics were presented with incomplete verbal descriptions of statistical interactions between fictitious variables, with an accompanying set of graphs that represented the interactions. The interactions varied in complexity — involving as few as two variables up to as many as five. The participants were timed as they attempted to complete the given sentences to correctly describe the interactions the graphs were showing. After each problem, they also indicated how confident they were of their solutions.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that, as the problems got more complex, participants performed less well and were less confident. They were significantly less able to accurately solve the problems involving four-way interactions than the ones involving three-way interactions, and they were (not surprisingly) less confident of their solutions. And five-way interactions? Forget it. Their performance was no better than chance.<\/p>\n

After the four- and five-way interactions, participants said things like, “I kept losing information,” and “I just lost track.”<\/p>\n

The results may have application in jobs where folks are expected to simultaneously juggle multiple variables, such as air traffic control.<\/p>\n

(via BoingBoing<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting article on problem complexity and how the human brain tries to cope with it — and, eventually, when it cannot. According to University of Queensland cognitive science researchers Graeme…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10695,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/11\/16\/wile_e_coyote_super_geniu.html","url_meta":{"origin":7423,"position":0},"title":"“Wile E. 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