Saturday, April 12, 2008

I knew psychology without knowing that it's psychology

I asked my 11 year old son on where he lost his geography notebook. He was clueless. It wasn't new for him to lose things and look lost in front of me. Last month it was geography book, another day it was another book and so on. In the first year of school, he used to lose pencils and erasers so frequently that we always bought boxes of them.

Like most dumb parents I too tried telling him on how I used to take care of my possessions. It just struck me that I didn't have too many things to care for. Until 3rd grade, all I need to carry was one notebook for Mathematics, 3 or 4 books and a slate. That's all. The number increased gradually, but some kind of laziness prevented me from carrying more than 10 items to school until the 12th grade.

And now, I stumbled upon the 50 year old psychology theory on the limited capacity of memory.

And how did I arrive at this information to blog about? I was reading on a technology blog, that talked about interviews, linked to Microsoft interview, remembered a riddle I got to hear in an interview with i2 technology guys (that I didn't answer and didn't get a job at i2), checked up on what i2 is upto, and eventually landed at the psychology page linked above.

It is an interesting exercise to see how the mind links information. But "seeing" your mind working is a gift.

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