Statistics For Data Entry: The Brave New Step

A reader writes:"First there was Dasher, a novel application of statistical theory that lets free texts be written using only a pointing device. Dasher works by predicting the continuations of the text being written, based on what has been written so far; there is a probability associated with each offered continuation and the presentation is designed to make it easier to choose more probable continuations. A big advantage of statistics-based interfaces is that they automatically enforce correctness, because correct strings are more probable than incorrect ones. Now the same approach has been extended to writing maths. Apropos is a Javascript application (it supports IE6 & Firefox) to create mathematical expressions. It represents the math using MathML, the official XML spec for mathematics. It is definitely clunky when compared to Dasher, but better than MS Equation Editor etc. It is interesting to consider if this approach can be extended to other XML vocabularies (for example, a model for HTML that suggests the markup as you go along - a properly trained one will make it harder to create pages with blinking text, loads of images etc.), or to formal languages other than XML (e.g. programming languages). Stochastic modeling can also be used as a basis for speech recognition, with the recognizer using the model to choose a continuation when the speech signal is ambiguous or indistinct."

Comments

Re:Like t9

[KjetilK]

Not really. I use T9 daily to write SMSes, and Dasher now and then for the coolness of it. Dasher is in Debian and I would guess in many other distros. Just try it out to feel the difference.

Dasher is something I would really like to have on a PDA and even a cellphone. T9 is just a simple aid to write a couple of hundred charachters at most, but nothing that would help me writing longer texts.

PDA-makers, hear this: You need to put a lot more effort into text-entry interfaces. Have a serious look at Dasher!