[Basic] Skill of the week: Speed-Reading and Typing

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Except that doesn't debunk it at all. the Goal isn't to make the slowest possible layout

Both articles touch on the jamming question as well (as does the counterexample).

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Both articles touch on the jamming question as well (as does the counterexample).

Given I've actually used a manual type righter, and had to deal with that jamming first hand, you really think article that already made on flawed assation is convince me my experience doesn't exist? And yes I read the Smithsonian one and NOT doe doesn't debunk the jamming concern it barely mentioned it in passing that it part of the myth, it basically ignores in favor if hit Morse code theory and saying others systems where not proven flat out better, which given the goal wasn't to designed the worst layout doesn't hold water neither does their proof that it not the worse system debunk the myth because the debunked a strawman.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Except that doesn't debunk it at all. the Goal isn't to make the slowest possible layout, as that's just begs for someone to make a better mouse trap and steal your market, the goal is to slow it down enough that you find a balance of speed and reliability

Note that designing your keyboard to minimize jamming is not at all the same thing as designing your keyboard to be slow, so that part anyway is mythical. I suppose you want consecutive hammers to come in from a direction different than the previous one was falling to do that, which is going to be depending on the internal layout of the type levers, and hence different for every design.

And for some reason early patents for different machines even by the same manufacturer *do* have different, and equally random looking, keyboard layouts....

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Except that doesn't debunk it at all. the Goal isn't to make the slowest possible layout, as that's just begs for someone to make a better mouse trap and steal your market, the goal is to slow it down enough that you find a balance of speed and reliability

Is there any evidence to support this as an accurate historical account, rather than an urban legend? The historical study I read claimed that the trials that supposed proved the superiority of Dvorak over QWERTY were far from impartial or properly statistically controlled.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Is there any evidence to support this as an accurate historical account, rather than an urban legend? The historical study I read claimed that the trials that supposed proved the superiority of Dvorak over QWERTY were far from impartial or properly statistically controlled.

And one of the things the Smithsonian article did proved a link to a newer study on the Dvorak. Unfortunately my biggest problem with the article, it failed to build that historical record as well. I'm willing to believe the Smithsonian that they provided the most historical accurate account they could, however it's lacking any real skill at debunking the myth because they debunked a strawman instead. They would have better off pitching this article of why the QWERTY layout became dominate, as that they did support in the article and be honest that they didn't have evidence one way or the other about the real myth, other than the fact the myth lacks historical verification either, and they find the less probable due to the inventor also latter tried to replace QWERTY with what he thought was a better layout (not Dvorak) is a slightly stronger indication he was trying to make the best one he could.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Is there any evidence to support this as an accurate historical account

The second link I posted, from The Smithsonian, in turn links to a paper by a pair of researchers at Kyoto University describing their investigation into the "Prehistory of QWERTY", including some other keyboard layouts that were experimented with at that time. That paper lists their sources, including various articles and patents from around 1870.

The most interesting connection they make, which I'd never heard before, was the initial interest in the Type-Writer for use in receiving Morse code transmissions, where they point out some similarities in the QWERTY layout to patterns in Morse that resemble each other. The closeness of Z and SE, for instance, are supposedly related to the similar of the Morse patterns for those letters, and the corresponding uncertainty of the receiving operator when hearing them. But there's a lot of difference in the early layouts, with some of the changes apparently being nothing more than personal preference or whim of some of the designers, while others were driven by customer feedback after using some prototype models. Certainly the paper doesn't cite any description by the designers of their using any time-motion or reliability studies to motivate their changes.

The paper includes a chart measuring distances between typebars in the early machines for common pairs of letters. There's not an obvious association between letter frequency and distance, as you'd expect from the anti-jamming argument. Some of the early changes run exactly counter to this argument. For instance, apparently the period had the place of the R for a while, but the R was later swapped next to the E, which would make that problem worse, not better.

The paper also mentions a couple of other legends for the origin of the keyboard layout, including a story that it was chosen to allow salesman to easily impress potential customers with the speed of typing the brand name, "Type-Writer", by putting all those characters on the top row. Another nice story, and it's true enough that you can spell the word just with the top row. But since the early sales demonstrations actually were transcription of dictation or Morse code, there's really nothing to it.

Given the lack of any obvious ordering in the layout, people have apparently been inventing their own stories about it for over a hundred years. It's entirely possible that there's a large amount of simple historical accident in the layout, rather than deliberate design to any particular end from first principles. But that doesn't satisfy our desire for just-so stories, so we continue to make them up.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Given the lack of any obvious ordering in the layout, people have apparently been inventing their own stories about it for over a hundred years. It's entirely possible that there's a large amount of simple historical accident in the layout, rather than deliberate design to any particular end from first principles. But that doesn't satisfy our desire for just-so stories, so we continue to make them up.

Well not exactly accident - there must have been some reason the designers though was valid for at least some of the keys to be moved where they are instead of in any logical order, particularly given the way F-P actually is pretty close to keeping adjacent letters in the alphabet adjacent. But I doubt it's knowable unless somebody involved in the design wrote it down, and I'd have expected somebody to have found it by now if they had. Even you could show it doesn't reduce jamming over the same design in alphabetical order you couldn't really distinguish between that wasn't the motivation and it was but the designers did a poor job.

[CoyoteGestalt]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I could see a game where being able to get hired for secretary work where-ever you want matters. But such an ability is still probably worth only a perk or two. .

Given that Shorthand is a perk, Typing could easily be treated as one if you wanted to, too, I think.


For either Shorthand or Typing, though, another important function in game is the ability to transcribe interviews, interrogations, and overheard conversations quickly, rather than just having to jot down the general gist of it afterwards (and shorthand and typing are learnable, where Photographic Memory isn't). That's not a big deal in modern games where you can easily record things, but important in certain settings (especially Victorian through Pulp-era detective and horror stories, and to some extent WWII). Mina Murray used it in Dracula.

And similarly, Speed-Reading can come up there when you need to find something in your own notes in a hurry. ("What did that cultist we captured say the weakness of this monster was? I need to find it before it eats Fred....")

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by malloyd

F-P actually is pretty close to keeping adjacent letters in the alphabet adjacent.

According to that Kyoto paper, the earliest keyboard layout was in alphabetical order; also a two-row design much like a piano keyboard (without the gaps in the black keys).

I agree that if the goal had been either to slow typists down or prevent jamming (or the first as a way to achieve the second), somebody would have found the diaries or lab notebooks or test results or customer feedback letters about it. Those seem conspicuously lacking.

Also, given everyone's eagerness to patent their keyboard layouts, there would have been competing, faster, alternatives that resolved the mechanical issues, or marketed simply on the basis of speed, and those layouts would easily be demonstrated actually to be faster, since their competition was deliberately slowed down and they'd likely have known exactly how the slowing was done. A simple rearrangement of some keys, restoring an earlier arrangement that was too fast, would have sufficed. Jamming problems would more likely be addressed by changes in the design of the typebar mechanism, not rearranging the keycaps over the same machinery. (Consider the Selectric typeball, for instance.)

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Being a graduate student I type quite a bit though I have no idea how many WPM. However I'm convinced that I type faster in English than I do in Icelandic, are there or should there be some effects of language on this skill?

How much typing do you do in English, relative to Icelandic? How much larger is the character set you use in Icelandic? Do you have direct keys for all the Icelandic characters, or do you have to compose them from multi-key sequences?