A “10 Things” List is a popular structure for online content and print magazine articles. But why 10? The Arabic number system we use is based on units of 10. We have 10 fingers. These are the answers I’ve most often gotten in response to this question. But when we organize content, is there a better structure to use?
Many experts in how the brain and language work have stated over the last many decades that George Miller’s research from 50 years ago that was published as “The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” offers a handy way to organize information that maps onto how our brain works. Over the decades there have been many misapplications, over-extensions, and misinterpretations of Miller’s basic findings that there are fairly well defined limits on the number of items we can manipulate while in short term memory. Miller found 5 to 9 items are the standard limits for list item recall. There are other constraints that other researchers have found. This fact doesn’t invalidate Miller’s findings. Neural systems are among the most complex systems in our world. There can be more more than one generalized rule teased from a complex system.
So far there isn’t one that involves the number 10. So convention appears to be the only real determining factor for using the number 10 in top ten lists, ten worst lists, ten things to know about articles, ten new items or products lists. So should you produce or procure ten-based lists for your content needs? Sure. Why not. But you will join a gah-zillion other ten-based lists floating around out there.
Why not make your lists stand out a bit and possibly make them more memorable by finding coherent groupings of your content subject and presenting them as linked sets that can be easily remembered? I can’t think of a single reason not to go with numbers smaller than 10.
My own preference is to combine the memory magic of the number seven plus or minus two with another magic numeric principle hinged on the number four as discussed by researcher Nelson Cowan in his work. The “magic” associated with four of anything is that we can know (rapid enumeration of small numbers of objects) the number of a group of objects instantly if we see a group of four or less things. More than four requires counting.
You don’t want your reader to have to count, you want them to be able to remember your salient points, and you want them to be able to recall examples of each point you make too, if at all possible. So how do you do it? Well logical grouping of the points you make, and keeping those points to as few as possible, to the fewest that are truly central to your topic is the best way. Delivering a good product that hangs together is always better than padding your list to get to 10 components.
Some techniques you might employ to manage weighty lists containing more than 7 – 9 items would be to use sub-groupings. For example if you had a listing of 100 color names you could organize them by their closest primary color, by the ROY G. BIV rainbow schema (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,) by pastels and brights, by how well they render online (web safe colors,) or even by order they are added to languages (if the language names only two colors the two words mean wet/dark and dry/light, if it has three then red is added, and so on.) Clever sub-groupings will help the reader remember groups of details. Experiment and keep track of returning visitors to articles that have incorporated this technique. A successful pairing with bring return visitors and referrals from those return visitors.
Happy organizing!
Graphics
I’m back in graphics mode! I just love what I can do for myself when it comes to making or finding the right image. It took a while to learn the basics, but I consider it time well invested. I learned how to manipulate images, create textures, and how to find out of copyright images so that I could build things for myself in the virtual world of Second Life® way back in 2006. The image above is a marketing image I created for a labyrinth I built in Second Life and then ported into another virtual world. I’ve sold it, given it away, and used it myself many on various platforms.
The image below is of a building and items I put together for Tucson’s Birthday in Second Life and am reusing the items I made myself in the virtual world I am now using for exhibits, meetings and relaxation. The graphics for the city birthday celebration were imported with permission by the nonprofit that organizes the annual neighborly, neighborhood event. The birthday gift was made by someone else as were the crates, but I made the espresso maker and the cake.
I just love this image. This is my avatar, Ana, from Second Life on a building platform up in the “sky” above the “Tucson’s Birthday” area. In virtual worlds you can build using prims, the basic building blocks of most virtual worlds, while punked out and sporting some formal wear. I love it!
Here are some graphics made for import into virtual worlds. First, an ivy covered frame I built from scratch.
I texture I created when playing, but that I have used for walls and floors in virtual worlds that I call, chocolate circuitry.
I couldn’t find a concrete flooring I liked, so I created a concrete-esque repeating tile texture for an contemporary design I built in a virtual world.
I don’t just design graphics for virtual worlds. I made this “award” that people can pick up for themselves for my site, Casita Gaia using iconic brushes in Gimp (Gnu image manipulation program.)
I coordinated the award with the site banner.
Cool, no?
Then there are the logos I’ve created for myself for different purposes. I used Art Text® to create these.
I’m also very good at finding public domain images for use on websites. This is a clipped version of the image I used on my Late Boomer site in the late 90s and early 2000s – I found it in the National Archives digital image collections.
National archives are amazing. I found this poster in them. Totally legal to use! At some point I will clean it up and restore the image.
Here is another public domain image I am using in my Arizona Centennial virtual exhibit.
Some public domain images are so fun I have to download them as I know that some day I will find the perfect use for them. No?
So much information can be conveyed in a single image. I love having this skill that adds “oomph” to my projects and writings.
update: 10 february 2012
Being Smart is Good
I don’t know if you have ever looked at the school books from the 19th Century or even early 20th Century, but the 6th “readers,” along the lines of McGuffy, Harper, Baldwin, Harvey and Appleton readers, but looking at them is an eye opening experience. This is from page 461 from McGuffey’s 6th Reader, revised edition also know as the Eclectic Series. I downloaded the reader it from Project Gutenberg here, but you can read just the section online too. It speaks to a mature person’s free will, implies the expectation for the desire for knowledge,
Every person must judge for himself how long a time he can bestow
upon any single subject, or how many and various are the books in
respect to it which it is wise to read…
Nor should it be argued that such rules as these, or the habits which
they enjoin, are suitable for scholars only, or for people who have much
leisure for reading. It should rather be urged that those who can read the
fewest books and who have at command the scantiest time, should aim to
read with the greatest concentration and method; should occupy all of
their divided energy with single centers of interest, and husband the few
hours which they can command, in reading whatever converges to a
definite, because to a single, impression.
These readers provided the structure that educated our grandparents, great grandparents and great great grandparents. Surely no one can say that these volumes reflected anything other than the basic American culture. These readers obviously prepared Americans to be literate, value education, value life-long learning, and understand that being well educated was part of being a good citizen. We set up libraries and schools to promote an educated democracy.
“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” (Aristotle)
So from where does this trend to glorify ignorance and lack of information come? Well it might have come from the loss of critical thinking skills being taught as a core part of U.S. education, but it also comes from an unequal access to information.
The appeal of the Occupy America movement harkens back to olden days, yes the days of the “Readers,” when communities had control over themselves while being guided by the connecting principles of our laws. The people had more say in what happened locally to them because information traveled more slowly, and the forces that acted against the community’s interests would not be able to react instantly. If people needed to meet all night somewhere to figure out what was a threat to their community and what the informed, likely-to-succeed reaction to that threat was, they could. Today we cannot. Parks and public spaces are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or dusk to dawn which in the winter can be a short time in the Rust Belt and northern rural areas of the U.S. We are right now readjusting to the instant flow of information and dis-information that we all know exists although we may ascribe it to different groups. One of the things that I personally believe prompted the occupy movement is that when 10 percent of the population, as a rough average, is out of work, they have time to consume more information than when they are employed.
Those of us who have had access to information via the internet and the academy for going on two decades now forget that many people are only now in the second decade of the 21st Century getting access to high speed information networks. Many of my friends from the mid-west are still on dial up access to the internet because out in the country you don’t have cable lines as one of the utilities that is running from utility pole to utility pole the length of every black top and dirt road so you don’t have cable bringing you TV and the internet in a bundle as an option as you do in major cities and suburbs. They might have a satellite TV. These same friends who live in, say, Avilla, Indiana, and Comcast’s Basic Cable package is the least expensive tier of service and gives subscribers access to 18 channels. “Among these stations included are Avilla’s local CBS, PBS, ABC, FOX, NBC and CW affiliates, several public and educational access stations, Home Shopping Network and WGN America. The basic Dish satellite package in the same geographic area provides Fox News but not MSNBC or CNN. Nothing divergent there. Conservative and line towing stations all. Even when you look at Dish TV for the same area, the basic package has no major competition for Fox. There is no CNN, only Headline News, and no MSNBC. The percentage of conservative Christian stations is remarkably high. How are non-conservative ideas even to enter the discussion if they are kept out of the data flow. Radio is similarly biased.
Being well educated is a good thing. Having information to make well informed decisions is good. Being an active participant in our democratic process is good. Being unemployed gives a person time to think, read, and look around at the state of the world. Information is spreading, there are still pockets where unfettered and unfiltered access to information is the norm, but those places are fewer and fewer in number. Is it a coincidence that these places where information is expensive, if it is even available, are also some of the places where ultraconservatives have political power? Nope. It isn’t. I have lived my life in two of the most conservative and closed minded states in the U.S.
Information is power and we have to get information to the people if democracy is to survive. The 99% talking about things that haven’t been spoken of for decades is an education of sorts and will open information channels. This may well be the start of an awakening.