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From: Mark Conrad on 24 Jan 2010 20:12

Whee, Whoopie, Whee, fun fun fun...

I used MacSpeech dictate to check out how fast I
could dictate, in so-called wpm (Words Per Minute)

It wound up being a blazing 15 wpm !!!

15 wpm! - but I read in MacSpeech advertising that
MacSpeech is supposed to be good for 160 wpm.

What is the problem here?

....and why should we, as Mac users, even care?
<yawn>

Well, for one reason, SR keeps getting a little better
as the years slip by, and SR is an easy and quick
and intuitive way of getting text created; no one has
to waste precious time learning how to type - - - or
learning the method _before_ typing, namely
banging chisels on clay tablets, now THAT was slow.

....and SR will probably be good enough for our kids
to use, because it keeps s-l-o-w-l-y improving, so we
are doing our kids a favor by introducing them to SR.


I checked my results again, sure enough I could only
dictate 15 repetitions of the word:

hepaticocholangiocholecystenterostomies

....in 60 seconds, a lousy *15* wpm, disgusting!


With 37 letters that word is the longest word in
Gould's Medical Dictionary, and the longest that is
actually in use within the medical community,
according to the website:

<http://www.answers.com/topic/hepaticocholangiocholecystenterostomies>

That word is plural, it means all surgical procedures
which create of a connection between the gall bladder
and other organs, such as the small intestine.

Audio pronunciation of that word is available on
that website, right through the speakers of your Mac.


Typical use of that word in a sentence:

"I have done 5 hepaticocholangiocholecystenterostomies
during my tenure as a surgeon in this hospital"


Back to the 15 wpm problem.
*************************

I will switch words, I will use a short word, "bee".

I am not about going to try to dictate repetitions of "bee"
for a full minute, way too stressful for me.

But I *DID* dictate 30 repetitions in 5 seconds.

beebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebee
beebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebee
beebeebeebeebeebee


On the document, MacSpeech automatically installed
spaces between the words so the result looked
like this: bee bee bee bee bee bee... etc.


That is equivalent to 360 wpm. (12 x 30 = 360 wpm)

....if I had been able to keep it up for a full minutes,
instead of only 5 seconds.



With a little practice, I found I could dictate 36
repetitions of the word "bee" in 5 seconds, which
would be equivalent to 432 wpm. (12 x 36 = 432 wpm)

....if I had been able to keep it up for a full minute,
instead of only 5 seconds.

Of course all "bee" words came out correctly in my
document, not even one error, good old MacSpeech.

Okay, problem solved, I will just have to use short
words if I am bragging about my wpm speed.<g>


THAT, gentle people, is why "wpm" does not mean
too much, when you are trying to determine how fast you
can dictate using MacSpeech, and still have 100% raw
accuracy, with no text corrections needing to be done.


BTW, a little experiment showed that if I deliberately
mispronounced one of the "bee" words, saying "by"
instead, MacSpeech would faithfully spot the
errant word and output it:

bee bee bee bee by bee

Mark-

(details of my setup here needed to achieve the
100% raw accuracy in this test, for anyone who
wonders how I did it - gladly furnished on request)
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