chunking principle

Chunking is a principle that applies to the effective communication of information between human beings. It is particularly useful in the domain of written communication. It was first put forward in the 1950s by a Harvard psychologist named George A. Miller. He published a landmark journal article entitled "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two". Miller studied the short term memory. For example, how many numbers people could be reliably expected to remember a few minutes after having been told these numbers only once. The answer was: "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two".

Millers concept goes beyond numbers. For example, most of us can remember about seven recently learned chunks of similarly classified data.