Re: Inferior vs. superior.

[Norman Bauman nbauman@xxxxxxxx]

Well, it never seened to be an open question to me either, until somebody
raised the question of whether I actually knew first-hand of tests in which
equally trained Dvorak typists were faster and more accurate than equally
trained Qwerty typists.

Does anybody really have any good data?

It does seem intuitively more satisfying to me that a rationally-designed
keyboard with the benefit of several decades of typing experience would be
better than the first attempt designed for a technology with artificial
constraints--but I don't have the data to confirm that intuition.

The WSJ editorial page article charged that the tests that purported to
prove the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard were run by companies that
were trying to promote the Dvorak keyboard. That also seems plausable, but
I also know from experience that the WSJ editorial page is wrong all the
time too.

I know that the US Navy did some good studies of typing speed during WWII,
but I don't know if they ever did a Dvorak-to-Qwerty comparison.



At 08:50 PM 5/24/00 +1000, Michael Edwards wrote:
>
>[Norman Bauman:]
>
>>With regard to the question
>>of whether it was possible for Microsoft or anyone to dominate the industry
>>with a technically inferior product, some economists were using the Dvorak
>>keyboard as an example of a technically superior product that failed.
>----------------------------------------
>
>   It doesn't seem to me to be an open question. I'm sure it happens
all the
>time that an inferior product wins out. Qwerty would seem to be an example.
>Also the common cassette, VHS (so I've read), and Windows. They all seem
to be
>inferior things that defeated superior alternatives that either existed
>previously or arose at about the same time.
>   In fact, in my more cynical moments, I wonder whether, if something is
>clearly superior, it is *less* likely to win in the end.
>
>----------------------------------------
>>Some
>>other economists were arguing, on the Wall Street Journal editorial page,
>>that the original claims of the superiority of Dvorak were exaggerated. I
>>certainly wouldn't take the WSJ editorial page on faith, but they did raise
>>the question of, how do I really know that Dvorak is better. I dunno. Does
>>somebody really know?
>----------------------------------------
>
>   I would have thought that experiments conducted where some people used
>qwerty and some used Dvorak would give pretty objective results. If large
>enough groups of people were used in these experiments it would tend to
>eliminate individual differences between different participants. I
thought it
>was an established fact that the Dvorak keyboard was faster and less tiring.
>   And of course I would imagine that anyone who has learned both keyboards
>would be aware of whether one was noticeably superior to the other. I've
>already heard a couple of opinions to the effect that the Dvorak was
>considerably better. I've never heard anyone claim that the qwerty
keyboard is
>better: the arguments usually raised in its favour allude only to its
>commonness, its status as a universal standard. I suspect that, for any
>commodity, there is a threshold of commonness that, once reached, is
>irreversible and quality doesn't matter any more (very sadly). I suspect
that
>happened a long time ago with Windows.
>
>             Regards,
>             Michael Edwards.
>
>
>
>
>

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