Friday, September 24, 2010

Predicting hand position on the keyboard by observing random text \m/

Today, I was just typing some nonsense keys on my keyboard and happened to observe something interesting. Below is a uniform random sample of what I typed:

gh
jgh
jg
hjg
hjg
hjg
hjg
hjg
hkg
hjg
hg
jg
hjg
hjg
hg
hjg
hg
hjg
h
gh
gh
ghj
ghj
ghj
g
hjg
khg
hg
hg
hg
hjg
hjg
hjg
hjg
h
ghj

Notice how 'h' repeats a lot of times. It so happens that my middle finger was on 'h'. So, is frequency somehow linked to the length of finger? Turns out I was right. See table below. I used the keys G, H, J, K. My index finger was on G, middle on H, ring finger on J and little finger on K.

Character (Ordered by frequency)
Actual Finger on char
Finger (Ordered by length)
H
Middle
Middle
J
Ring
Ring
G
Index
Index
K
Little
Little

You can try this on your own. Place your fingers on the keyboard (horizontally, any other orientation complicates the situation as relative length changes).

Probability theory says that the chance of occurrence of G, H, J or K is 1/4. But I think that in this case, probability is somehow weighted, in a sense that it is proportional to the length of the finger.

So, what's the use of all this?
  1. I wasted your time...haha!
  2. You can predict the hand position based on random text...duh!
  3. Its cool!
  4. See 1
Is it of any use?
I guess not, that explains the label 'lame observations'. But who cares?

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