Construct · 5 fields · 8 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, four limits Nearest construct by meaningchannelcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to capacity is channel.
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The number of items the mind can hold and process at once. George Miller reported in 1956 that people retain about seven chunks in immediate memory, plus or minus two, and borrowed the phrase channel capacity from information theory to name the limit on how much a person takes in. Nelson Cowan reconsidered the evidence in 2001 and put the limit at about four items in the focus of attention, once chunking and rehearsal are controlled. The two disagree on the number and on the unit, chunks against items, but share the claim that the mind has a small, fixed ceiling on what it holds.[1][2]
The maximum rate at which information passes over a channel with arbitrarily small error. Claude Shannon defined channel capacity in 1948 as the largest mutual information between a channel's input and output, taken over all input distributions, and proved in the noisy-channel coding theorem that reliable communication is possible below this rate and impossible above it. The capacity is a property of the channel, reported in bits per symbol or bits per second, and it is a hard bound: no code, however clever, transmits reliably faster than C.[3]
A person's competence to hold rights and to perform acts the law will enforce. Contractual capacity, set out in the Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 12, is the power to incur binding obligations; minors, the mentally ill, and the intoxicated may disaffirm, so their contracts are voidable rather than void. Testamentary capacity, from Banks v Goodfellow (1870), requires that a testator understand the nature of making a will, the extent of the property, and the claims of those who might expect to benefit, with no disorder of mind perverting the disposition. Capacity here is a threshold a person meets or fails, not a quantity.[4][5]
The maximum output a plant or system can produce in a period. Leif Johansen defined plant capacity in 1968 as the largest output obtainable per unit of time with the existing plant and equipment when the variable inputs are unrestricted. Capacity utilization, the ratio of actual output to this maximum, is tracked for United States industry in the Federal Reserve's G.17 release. Unlike Shannon's bound, this ceiling is soft: a plant can run above its rated capacity for a while, so reported utilization sometimes passes one hundred percent.[6][7]
In clinical ethics, capacity refers to a patient's ability to make a treatment decision, judged by understanding, appreciation, reasoning and expressing a choice. This meaning comes from Appelbaum (1988) in New England Journal of Medicine.[8]
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