alt Hacker NewsSo I've got some things that seem a little bit weird to me:
1. Typing uppercase characters counts as a mistake
I'm not sure how that got to be the case, but somehow typing an uppercase letter instead of the lowercase is a mistake, despite the fact that sentences start with a lowercase letter. This conflicts with my muscle memory of starting sentences with a capital letter.
2. WPM is not a useful metric on its own
WPM can rise and fall depending on the length of the word. The bigger the word the less likely you are to type that word correctly from muscle memory, so the speed drops. The speed also drops due to the word being longer. I believe having both metrics would yield more useful data, such as when do you slow down etc.
Speaking of which, there are some more statistic things that could help, like measuring how fast you are at fixing the mistakes, or measuring three-letter combinations instead of two-letter combinations, because the context of the third letter might help, but you do need more data to gain a statistically significant result. Maybe trying to classify mistakes by the side of keyboard they happen on -- i.e. are they simple typos or a miscoordination of your hands.
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Also, as pointed out by another commenter, hands also threw me off. I've been observing them and it's interesting that I don't use my little finger for the left row -- it's used in case I need to press shift.
Hi, thanks for checking out the app and for the feedback!
> 1. Typing uppercase characters counts as a mistake. I'm not sure how that got to be the case, but somehow typing an uppercase letter instead of the lowercase is a mistake, despite the fact that sentences start with a lowercase letter. This conflicts with my muscle memory of starting sentences with a capital letter.
So if you click on the topics (or whatever mode you're on), you will see the Options menu on the side. Capitalization is off by default but you can flip that back if you prefer capitalization. I've had folks request that capitalization be off by default hence the current state but I might change the default settings.
> 2. WPM is not a useful metric on its own
All typing sites generally use the same formula to calculate WPM - the length of the word doesn't matter. Most (pretty much all sites I've tried) sites use this formula: https://www.speedtypingonline.com/typing-equations. By all typed entries it's characters in this case. So it always assumes a length of 5 (avg. word length) and that's how it's calculated acorss all typing sites.
We have VERY detailed metrics. I may add a CPM toggle (toggle between both) but it seems most people prefer WPM as that's what they're used to on other sites.
> measuring three-letter combinations instead of two-letter combinations,
We measure both - see trigrams tab in the stats section.
> Also, as pointed out by another commenter, hands also threw me off. I've been observing them and it's interesting that I don't use my little finger for the left row -- it's used in case I need to press shift.
The hands are mostly there for folks learning correct touch typing practice - it's based on the most recommended general guidance for touch typing. It can be toggled off with the hand-icon button :)