On 15:47 14 May 2021, Chris said:

Pamela wrote:
On 13:50 14 May 2021, NY said:
"Theo" wrote in message
...
In uk.telecom.mobile Pamela
wrote:


A web site sends you 6-digit number to your phone to check your
ID. Do you memorise this by saying to yourself: 12-34-56 or
123-456?

It's a genuine question to see what number span people are using
to remember random numbers.

It depends on the structure of the number. eg:

55-67-99
132-231
1000-44
9-88888
27-288-9

Yes, if the number is already separated by hyphens/spaces, those
are the chunks that I try to memorise.

Apparently when the GPO started issuing phone numbers that were
longer than a couple of digits, they did some research and found
that people could remember chunks of either 2 or 3 digits, but a
4-digit chunk was harder to remember.

I'm not sure why the UK read a chunk as a stream of digits
(one-two-seven [pause] three-four-one) whereas European countries
assign tens-and-units significance to pairs of digits (twelve
[pause] seventy-three [pause] forty-one).

German has the problem of its "four and twenty blackbirds"
reversal of tens and units - you hear drei-und-siebzig (three and
seventy) but you write down 73 in the opposite order.

Most Germans have a mental buffer, waiting until they hear both
numbers in the pair before writing down the digits. But I noticed
one German writing down the digits in the order that he heard
them: first the units, then the tens digit to the left of it; skip
three spaces forwards for next unit and back one for tens. This
three-steps-forwards, one-step-back thing seemed to be very
cumbersome.

French falls foul of ambiguity because of its quatre-vignts
notation for 80: quatre vignts dix could be any of:

quatre-vignts-dix-huit (98)
quatre-vignts dix-huit (80 18)

A pause makes all the difference. I imagine that French speakers
make a very exaggerated pause in the second case to avoid
ambiguity, whereas almost no pause is needed between non-ambiguous
pairs such as vignt-huit trente-quatre (28 34).

I notice on the continent people often quote the digits of a phone
number in pairs, whereas the UK tends to quote a number in groups
of three digits.

I think it's because they read the two digits as single numbers: 15
56 45 is fifteen fifty-six forty-five. Whereas we read them as
single digits regardless of how we mentally group them: one five
five six four five.

I originally put it down to how their phone company laid out the
digits but I think it's more widespread than that.

Personally, I kind of visualise and alomst recognise the SIGHT of
digit-pairs but I remember digit-triplets mainly by their SOUND.

Do you remember them as three digit numbers (one hundred and
twenty-three) or triple digits (one two three)?

I don't register them as two specific three digit numbers.

I hear the digits when spoken and then recall the sound of their names
all run together ("sixfivethree") without registering the group as a
specific number.