Re: "Do What I Mean" - a suggestion for improving
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg97048] Re: "Do What I Mean" - a suggestion for improving
- From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
- Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 07:09:20 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Stanford University
- References: <200902281142.GAA16641@smc.vnet.net> <godm42$46k$1@smc.vnet.net>
In article <godm42$46k$1 at smc.vnet.net>, David Bakin <davidbak at gmail.com> wrote: > DrMajorBob, > > I think you're missing the point here - and actually, this is exactly the > point that AES keeps banging on. "It's up to a user to write what he means" > is small comfort to a user, especially one new to Mathematica, who doesn't > know how to express what he means. and can't **easily and quickly** track down that information, in documentation that's **matched to his or her needs**. > "DWIM" is a tongue-in-cheek name, not to be taken literally. It is just a > name for an meta-analysis feature that inspects the user's input and > proposes similar input forms that may be closer to what the user has in > mind, based on a database of common errors. Right. Given the sophistication of everything else that Wolfram does, I assume that it has always done a massive amount of sophisticated user testing, in which it presents its (soft)wares to a wide variety of different kinds of users, and observes and studies what errors they commonly make -- right? (At least it's my understanding that many other companies do this kind of thing, with whatever kind of wares they vend -- right?) So, the above-mentioned "database of common errors" already exists -- right?