Typing Facts

Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Typing Facts

From this site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4545714.stm

Prof Alan Hedge, Cornell University, found typing accuracy depends on room temperature:
At 77ºF employees had a 10% error rate
At 68ºF speed slowed by almost half, and error rate rose to 25%
Hedge also estimated this caused a 10% increase in labour costs per worker hour

Wouldn't mind those temps being converted to Celcius. But for sure when I'm code my hands really suffer and my typing and gameplay becomes poor. Also I play the guitar and cold hands are simply awful.

Actually the main point of the article is this

"It happens millions of times a day, but once in a while the result can be devastating. Earlier this month a trader on the Tokyo stock market accidentally blew £190m because of a simple typing error.

A computer which should have cancelled the transaction failed to click in, and this further embarrassment led to the resignation on Tuesday of the head of the Tokyo stock exchange."


Which kind of backs up my theory that you should always strive for accuracy and double check your work as what makes a small mistake large is purely down to context. For example Copy/Paste errors are fairly common in code, e.g. you copy/paste a section of code and change some of it but forget to change another critical part. It all appears fine until your biggest client runs it and calls the Helpdesk with "our entire system" has gone done type thing. Actaully if you are having to copy/paste code, you should probably make a resuseable function and of course you should test, test and test again. It always the last test of 50 that shows up a bug in my experience ;-)

Copy & Paste, now whats that? Actually another intesting statistic for you : over 50% of the casual game purchasors don't know what copy and paste is. Hence the tutorial on our sites : http://geomgame.com/tutorialCopypaste.php

[a http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hs=f23&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=68F+in+celsius&btnG=Search&meta=]Wouldn't mind those temps being converted to Celcius.[/a]

25C is too hot for my tastes, a max of 22 for me.

hmm, I was assuming 68F was cold but it's 20C which is the "room temperature" when you do scientific experiments. 25C does sound a tad hot. Mind you if my dream of writing games for a living whilst living in Spain or Florida etc is to come true, I'd better get used to it!

Tim: Yeah I used to do tuition and people were like gobsmacked to relase what Copy Paste was. Also those that do know often don't know about the keys Ctrl+C/V they always "use those little buttons on the tool bar" or menu options, sloooow.


A computer which should have cancelled the transaction failed to click in


I assume that was programmed on a cold day too ;)

Nobody at my place of work know

A) What a 'keyboard short-cut' is.
B) Any of the common keyboard short-cuts.
C) How to be told what A) and B) are.

This is why I get stuff done quicker than everyone else in the department, know more than my boss, his boss or the IT department about our accounting system and continue to get asked "How do I print from printer X?" and "How do I send an email I've got to someone else?".

I'm sure it would vary with what you're used to. I for one probably do more errors at 25C, as that's just too hot for me. I also read somewhere that our brain works best when the room temprature is 14C. 20C is perfect working temprature for me, in general I like to have it about 1-2C colder than my workmates. Then again, I'm from Iceland. :-)

Ragnar

i notice when it is a bit too cold for my likings, i work harder. If its more efficient, I dont know, but I work harder.

too warm an I get a tired feeling especially after lunch. This can be bad when driving so I pull over and close my eyes for a few minutes then feel OK again.


too warm an I get a tired feeling especially after lunch. This can be bad when driving so I pull over and close my eyes for a few minutes then feel OK again.



but when you wake up, the suns gone down, right?

nah, I meant few minutes precisely ;-)

Prof Alan Hedge, Cornell University, found typing accuracy depends on room temperature
Ah! Another Prof with a PHD in the Blindingly Obvious. :P

Wouldn't mind those being converted...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=77+fahrenheit+in+centigrade -> 25C

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=68+fahrenheit+in+centigrade -> 20C

:)

teamonkey: thanks but Pert already beat you to it.

(9/5)C+32=F. I remember that from about 30+ years ago! And I think that means that 5/9(F-32)=C. Although I'm happy to be corrected! I also seem to remember that men and women feel more comfortable at slightly different temperatures. The differences aren't that great - about 2 degs - but could be used at things such as conferences to ensure that the majority of your audience stayed awake!!