The Laws of Software Process

79

Of Methods and Models and Minds

Chunking

One of the primary mechanisms the brain uses to generate limited order

out of large-scale chaos is to “chunk” information by aggregating it in some

way. This aggregation reduces the sheer number of units being dealt with

by dealing with some collections of units as units themselves. Sufficient

chunking allows the number of objects to fall within our bandwidth. We can

see the effectiveness of chunking by comparing Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2. We

can “understand” Exhibit 1 much better than Exhibit 2 because the careful

ordering of the rows and columns chunks the data for us into smaller num-

bers of aggregates.

We very obviously see chunking in our numbering conventions. The

very big number discussed previously becomes: ...