Typing Tutor

[Maddi]

Yeah, my highest score on that one is 135 I think.

First try on a laptop with a keyboard I'm unfarmilar with (CTRL+BACKSPACE doesn't work like that on a Mac!) in which I took probably close to a second to drag my mousepad to the "stop timer" button. So eh I'm not really impressed. :/

And iago: I never use the right shift key. :)

1 mistake = try again
Has to be perfect. :)

It's actually really easy to fake your score in this.
Can get like 8000 wpm.

[Rule]

170 wpm is a world record???!  I can sustain about 230 WPM with QWERTY.  And I haven't been trying to break any records...

[Sidoh]

170 wpm is a world record???!  I can sustain about 230 WPM with QWERTY.  And I haven't been trying to break any records...

lol, what the hell?  What do you get on the typing test that someone linked earlier in this thread?

http://www.speedye.com/archives/2004/05/worlds_fastest.html

[Maddi]

170 wpm is a world record???!  I can sustain about 230 WPM with QWERTY.  And I haven't been trying to break any records...

Yeah I'm sure you do.

[Newby]

I honestly thought the record was 150 for an hour straight. But I guess I am misinformed.

Maddi, you miss my point:



How come I could barely get 135 on that last test which took maybe three quarters of a minute, and I take this one for three minutes straight and get nearly 10wpm higher?

Free internet typing tests may make you feel good, but they're in no way, shape or form very accurate or useful as a test of your abilities. What if I type faster when I am thinking of what I am going to type? What if these types of tests (ones where you write what you read) I do poorly at?

[Maddi]

I honestly thought the record was 150 for an hour straight. But I guess I am misinformed.

Maddi, you miss my point:



How come I could barely get 135 on that last test which took maybe three quarters of a minute, and I take this one for three minutes straight and get nearly 10wpm higher?

Free internet typing tests may make you feel good, but they're in no way, shape or form very accurate or useful as a test of your abilities. What if I type faster when I am thinking of what I am going to type? What if these types of tests (ones where you write what you read) I do poorly at?

Yes I'm aware.
I do know that I can type the alphabet abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz in 1.9 seconds. :)
http://www.addictinggames.com/fingerfrenzy.html

[Sidoh]

sorry guys, but my epeen is still way bigger.

[iago]

Free internet typing tests may make you feel good, but they're in no way, shape or form very accurate or useful as a test of your abilities. What if I type faster when I am thinking of what I am going to type? What if these types of tests (ones where you write what you read) I do poorly at?

There's definitely a huge difference between transcribing and writing. But it's hard to measure how fast you think + type.

[iago]

Isn't slower typing speeds a side-effect of this?  If you have to move around the keyboard more often (which you do if you want to satisfy the property you gave), isn't it the case that you'll be typing slower than if you didn't have to move around as much?

I bet there's a simple study you could do to see if this is the case.  The rough frequency of appearances of characters in English is common knowledge.  If you do something to compute the offsets of each key from every other key, then multiply by its frequency and average that, it seems like it'd be a good rough measure of how "efficient" a keyboard layout is.

It may be a side effect, but it wasn't an intention. The idea that it was intended to slow people down is a common myth/misconception/whatever.

And it's sort of hard to test, because I find that I can type words faster when I switch hands every other letter. So when my left hand is hitting one letter, my right hand has the next one queued up. The downside is that it's a lot easier to get letters out of order. :)

[Hitmen]

I can type like 10wpm. But this is on my phone. Stupid thing. Btw wtf is home row?

[BigAznDaddy]

I can type like 10wpm. But this is on my phone. Stupid thing. Btw wtf is home row?

:( i can only write 50 wpm and i am on my laptop. wow you guys are amazing good at typing.

[rabbit]

I just did the orange one and I noticed that I pretty much use only my index finger on my right hand when I type.

[Sidoh]

Isn't slower typing speeds a side-effect of this?  If you have to move around the keyboard more often (which you do if you want to satisfy the property you gave), isn't it the case that you'll be typing slower than if you didn't have to move around as much?

I bet there's a simple study you could do to see if this is the case.  The rough frequency of appearances of characters in English is common knowledge.  If you do something to compute the offsets of each key from every other key, then multiply by its frequency and average that, it seems like it'd be a good rough measure of how "efficient" a keyboard layout is.

It may be a side effect, but it wasn't an intention. The idea that it was intended to slow people down is a common myth/misconception/whatever.

And it's sort of hard to test, because I find that I can type words faster when I switch hands every other letter. So when my left hand is hitting one letter, my right hand has the next one queued up. The downside is that it's a lot easier to get letters out of order. :)

Oh, that's good to know.  Not that I don't believe you, but do you have a source?

Hehe.  Well, it might be more beneficial to measure the keys' offset from homerow or something, then.  It might also make sense to weight which key on homerow it's closest too, since, for example, pinkies are typically less agile than index fingers.

I can type like 10wpm. But this is on my phone. Stupid thing. Btw wtf is home row?

lol, I bet my sister was up to 30+ WPM on a phone without a qwerty keyboard.  She says she sends like 2000 texts a month though, heh.

I'm not sure if that was a serious question, but home row is the "starting place" for your fingers on the keyboard.  On qwerty, it's asdf jlk;.  On dvorak, it's aoeu dhtn

[Hitmen]

It was a serious question. Ive never heard that before. But i learned how to type with my fingers and a keyboard not in some class or with a weird program

[Camel]

I definitely have some bad typing habits, all of which stem from my complete non-use of the left-shift key. So, if I have to type, say, "<", (or even the quotation marks themselves), I have to remove my hands from home row.

I am the opposite; I don't use the right shift key.

In middle school, we had typing class, and I got a lot of grief for that - but I never broken the habit. Other than that, though, I type "normally."