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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?