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But what, exactly, is a number? A group of Chinese researchers tackled this deep philosophical question from a neurological perspective in a study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They sought to verify the invariant nature of numerosity perception in an experiment that included fMRI scanning to establish the brain structures activated in number sense.
Proceeding from the obvious assumption that numerosity is invariant to specific features like size, orientation, shape and color, they designed a test that included a number of dots within an enclosed space. To test the invariant effect of connection, they used arbitrary and irregular line segments connecting dots; there were three conditions: zero, one, and two connected pairs of dots were included in the test patterns. Subjects were shown these patterns adjacent to reference patterns that contained 12 dots unconnected by line segments. They were asked to indicate solely through visual perception which pattern contained more dots.
The researchers found that connecting dots in the patterns led to a robust result of underestimation. The researchers tested another topological invariant, the inside/outside relationship, by enclosing pairs of dots within ovals and irregular oval-like shapes. Interestingly, the results demonstrated that underestimation also occurred in this condition, and that it depended directly on the number of enclosed dot pairs in the pattern.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sjwt on Monday October 12 2015, @11:07AM
Seriously,
I worked in a warehouse for 8 years,
in the pick and pack section the highest leveled job was order checker.
We were still using good old paper pick, so out throughput was high, but errors were also up, with a target rate of 99.8% and we often sat just on 99.8X%, sometimes lower, but mostly made it.
After a year or two of picking if you were good and got to move around though all the sections you could start to check the orders as they came around,
and I kid you not, after a month or so of checking orders, you could reach into a box that ranged between the size of A5 to A2(5x8inch to 16x23inch) that was full of mixed stationary goods, and in a few seconds check off every item and quantity.
I could look at a list of 20 different items and amounts, glance into the box and know it was short one of 8 blue pens,and taht there was a green stapler instead of a blue one, it's fucking scary when that clicks, your brain can look at a list of that much and into a poorly organized box and in 2-3 seconds check it all off, this went even further, you could know that a wrong item say a pencil case instead of a folder was because the person had picked one shelf too high or low, or an aisle over.
We truly don't use the power of our brains in day to day often.