I shall begin my case history by telling you about some experiments that tested how accurately people
can assign numbers to the magnitudes of various aspects of a stimulus. In the traditional language of
psychology these would be called experiments in absolute judgment. Historical accident, however, has
decreed that they should have another name. We now call them experiments on the capacity of people to
transmit information. Since these experiments would not have been done without the appearance of
information theory on the psychological scene, and since the results are analyzed in terms of the concepts
of information theory, I shall have to preface my discussion with a few remarks about this theory.