Count every ’ F ’ in the following text:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS…
How many do you count? Click on spoiler box below for the answer.
How many F’s? … No, there are 6, read it again.
So weird…how do I miss it the first time
Uh… That’s what I got. What did you assume I got?
I don’t get it. The answer I came up with was the same one in your spoiler box.
We’ve done this one several times previously, though it’s next to impossible to search for. The upshot is some study found people tend to overlook some or all of the Fs in the occurrences of the word “of” and therefor undercount.
I completely missed the “OF” F’s in my initial readings of the sentence. It’s like they didn’t even exist, and I was* looking *for them. It’s interesting how your mind scans text when reading. It really is more of a sort of a mental gestalt process than a linear “read” of the text.
You didn’t say to read the line of text, but to count the Fs.
Oh I was looking for and counting the F’s and missed them when they were attached to the OF’s.
I didn’t read the words. I scanned the string for Fs.
It appears to be a shortened version of this exercise which is intended to demonstrate the difficulty in obtaining accurate data under pressure.
Unfortunately, many websites have taken it and distilled it down to the version in the OP and frequently conclude with some variant of the ridiculous claim that the human brain cannot process the word “of.”
Got 6…
I teach phonics to little kids, and always point out that “of” breaks the rules, what with an “o” which sounds like a “u”, and an “f” which disguises itself with a “v” sound. So it didn’t get me.
I’ve heard this used as a demonstration of being left or right brain dominant - if you’re left brained and vocal you read it in your head and “of” sounds like “uv” and doesn’t register as an F, whereas if you’re right brained you visually look for the F so you count it.
Edit: It’s probably BS.
Strangely, I knew what the gimmick was, and quickly visually scanned the sentence and still got 3 because I ignored “of” - weird.
So you’re saying I’m in my right mind?
Nice. Good to know.
There are 7 . . . 6 in the line typed in all caps, and 1 in the next line.
(It says “in the following text,” not “in the following line.”)
My answer ranged from 6 to 10 depending on how I interpreted the instructions.
I got five - I missed the last “of.” :smack:
I got 9