Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!hubcap!wtwolfe
From: wtwolfe@hubcap.UUCP (Bill Wolfe)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Most important information first
Message-ID: <2907@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 30 Aug 88 20:44:33 GMT
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 33

Regarding the comment that month-day-year is better because
it presents "most inportant information first", I'd like to
point out that telephone numbers are presented as

   Country code - area code - local number

or

       (Area code) local number,

and somehow, when the country code and area code are in fact
the local defaults, people are able to rapidly scan forward 
to the local number, automatically focusing on the information
which is locally important.  Thus, I have great difficulty 
accepting the contention that it is somehow bad human engineering
to use root -> leaf form when specifying a point within a
hierarchical address space; it appears that a human mechanism
exists which allows a very efficient scan of the higher-level
information.  In left-to-right languages such as English, 
there is a significant probability that failing to use this form
will result in the scan halting once the local information 
has been processed, without continuing on to verify the 
higher-level information.  Making the assumption that the
higher-level information does not need to be scanned,
the lower-level information is put to immediate use.  This 
results in "human error"; the form which requires that the 
higher-level information be scanned, even automatically, 
is less likely to result in this "unverified assumptions" 
error.  We now question the defenders of non-hierarchical 
presentation as to how a form which tends to promote human 
error represents an advance in human engineering.


                                    Bill Wolfe