Quantifying information and experts' knowledge

[vrba]

Hello all,

 

This is my first post here.

 

I would need several hard-to-find information for my project and would be grateful to anyone that could point me to the direction of papers that could contain such information or provide those info directly.

 

First, speaking about long-established science fields like mythematics, chemistry, sociology, etc. (or their subdisciplines), what is the approximate quantity of knowledge information currently reached in those fields (in bits or bytes)?

 

Second, how big is the quantity of information that an expert in a specific field has stored in his/her brain?

 

Of course, to be an expert, you must know crucial information and be familiar with methodology, literature, logic, etc., so I would like to know whether the rate of actually memorized information is, for example 0.1%, 1% or 10%, etc.

 

Thank you very much in advance,

Hrvoje

[insane_alien]

these values are likely impossible to put any kind of figure on.

 

for the quantity of knowledge in specidic fields, well... its increasing all the time, and at an exponential rate and do you want to count all the raw data or just the analyses either way its going to be massive but i suspect raw data inclusion will increase it by several orders of magnitude.

 

we don't actually know exactly how much information the brain can store for one, nor how to calculate the size of a memory in bytes or whatever. That and experts will differ greatly in how much they know about there subject, not all experts are equal(infact, that tends to be what makes them experts in the first place)

 

The last part doesn't even make sense, rate of memorized data as compared to what? the sum total knowledge of the field? if so then its absolutely tiny unless its an incredibly obscure field.

[vrba]

these values are likely impossible to put any kind of figure on.

 

for the quantity of knowledge in specidic fields, well... its increasing all the time, and at an exponential rate and do you want to count all the raw data or just the analyses either way its going to be massive but i suspect raw data inclusion will increase it by several orders of magnitude.

 

we don't actually know exactly how much information the brain can store for one, nor how to calculate the size of a memory in bytes or whatever. That and experts will differ greatly in how much they know about there subject, not all experts are equal(infact, that tends to be what makes them experts in the first place)

 

The last part doesn't even make sense, rate of memorized data as compared to what? the sum total knowledge of the field? if so then its absolutely tiny unless its an incredibly obscure field.

I'm fully aware that the precise quantification is impossible. What I look for are approximations, like that of Georges Anderla, who took all the human knowledge in the year 1 AD as a unit and then made a study of the estimated decrease in the time necessary for it doubling, but I need similar data specified across particular scientific disciplines.

 

Now, I must presume that the quantity of facts stored in an individual's memory doesn't change much with time and progress (Thomas K. Landauer made a nice study about the estimate of "bits in the brain" used for storing learned facts and came up with 10**9 bits) so, as the scope of the knowledge broadens, an expert will hold in his memory the ever diminishing percentage of the whole quantity of knowledge in his specialized field.

 

I would like to know some estimated figures (not necessarily the newest ones, in fact, the historic ones would be very useful for comparison), I'm sure they must exist somewhere.

 

Thanks,

Hrvoje

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

In order to make a things more clear, I would like to show an example of what I need (the numbers are fully arbitrary, of course):

 

"20 most significant world historic institutions have the libraries with 10**5 different volumes (different translations are not important and two works in different languages are considered one and the same work) containing in total 10**15 bits of information.

 

Those knowledge represents the vast majority of the facts that historiography in the world (bar the special projects that could be deemed sub-disciplines) uses and most historians would rarely have to venture far outside those information.

 

Now, a good historian had, during his lifetime, memorized 10**8 out of those 10**15."

 

This is the type of information I need, I would need a study that would put the "real" numbers instead of those I arbitrary inserted.

 

Thanks,

Hrvoje

Edited January 18, 2009 by vrba