Why Decimal System? Why Communities With More Than 150 Folks Tend to Split? New Consequences of the Seven Plus Minus Two Law

Authors

Leobardo Orea Amador, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

4-1-2021

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-21-40

Abstract

Why are we using the decimal system to describe numbers? Why all over the world, communities with more than 150 folks tend to split? In this paper, we show that both phenomena -- as well as some other phenomena -- can be explained if we take into account the seven plus minus two law, according to which a person can keep in immediate memory from 5 to 9 items.