I’m not sure where, but I can easily imagine this coming back into some teaching in the near future: I came across this today via Stephen Downes’ web site, but the original question comes from this post from Alan Levine. The brief version is that supposedly the 3M Corporation did research that concluded people process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. But even though this is frequently cited on the internets in many different places, neither Levine or Downes can find any of the details behind this claim.
Levine posted an update on his search for an answer to the 60,000 times question that makes for interesting reading. The short version is the search continues and the 60,000 times claim is more truthiness than true.