Giraffe as a training for FitalyStamp
| Posted by Hannes Frischat ® , Mon, Jan 17, 2000, 15:48:14 | Forum |
These are some thoughts on Giraffe as a training alternative for the FitalyStamp. Giraffe is the most-liked way on improving the personal Graffiti speed. Though, I didn't find any postings of giraffe highscores in deja.dom. So I compare just my personal values.
In my opinion the advantage of training the use of the FitalyStamp with giraffe in comparision to WPM is firstly that letters are completely random and secondly that the speed is given and increased very slowly.
As a professional musician I learned to know the advantages of practising mechanical abilities with a metronome. In contradiction to what most people think the most useful benefit of using a metronome is that it *slows down* the user. So he has the time and patience to get comfortable with the situation, do the movements without any physical or mental pressure, relax and control his accuracy. When the speed is increased very slowly (and decreased again sometimes) this will lead to incredible results in matters of speed and accuracy (at least in the musical area), although it must be said that this will take quite long time. Note that it is crucial for this sort of training to stay calm and loose instead of trying to get high scores with all means. What you train will be what you get used to.
On the other hand the WPM user can learn patterns of complete words. This is not possible with giraffe.
So I firstly measured my giraffe speed with Graffiti. My values after using the palm device for 5 months now are:
GRAFFITI
Beginner: 1735
Intermediate: 1305
Expert: 485
Then I started to train with the FitalyStamp (after having used Fitaly 2.0 for a couple of weeks before). Until now I did sixteen cycles of Beginner, Intermediate, Expert within 4 or 5 days and wrote the results down (Intermediate and Expert not always tested).
As you can see in the graph there was a nearly constant improvement of the score.
FITALYSTAMP
Beginner: 1321 first, 2487 now, average gain 90 per cycle
Intermediate: 600 first, 1273 now
Expert: 128 first, 284 now, average gain 10 per cycle
It should be taken into account that Graffiti and FitalyStamp values can not be compared 1:1 within Giraffe because Giraffe halts as long as letters are drawn in Graffiti. If you measure the total time of one test you will find that reaching 260 points with Graffiti in the expert mode takes about 25 % longer than with the FitalyStamp. So a value of 284 achieved with the FitalyStamp equals approximately 350 with Graffiti.
The graph shows that until now no saturation of the learning curve has been reached. It seems to be the linear beginning of a saturation curve which should follow the rule of y=S-B*e^(-n/z) where S is the saturation value and n is the number of training cycles.
Additional note: It is also a very intersting training to play the beginner level of giraffe without looking on the FitalyStamp or even in darkness. Interestingly if you _exactly_ know the position of the letter you will almost always hit it.
Also, there are practice modes for punctuation, extended and accented characters which are of big use.
I should say that I do not think that training with Giraffe makes any other familiarization obsolete. Of course the situation is different from "real" writing because the eye has to travel up and down very often and quickly. But until now my Graffiti training resulted in a very constant tapping frequency and a increase of my average writing speed of about 30% (I currently have 19-23 WPM depending on which sentence I use).
I send my device to the palm service today and will then proceed with my test. I will inform you about the proceeding of the test if you are interested.
Regards Hannes
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