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SUMMARY: Writing fast with any muscle - Professor David MacKay\, Departmen
 t of Physics\, Cambridge
DTSTART:20090929T141500Z
DTEND:20090929T144500Z
UID:TALK18691@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Hannah Critchlow
DESCRIPTION:This talk is part of the Cambridge Clinical Neuroscience and M
 ental Health Symposium\, 29th - 30th September 2009 at West Road Concert H
 all. This event is free to attend for cambridge neuroscientists although r
 egistration is required. To register\, and for further information\, pleas
 e visit: http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/cnmhs/\n\nAbstract: Keyboards a
 re inefficient for two reasons: they do not exploit the predictability of 
 normal language\; and they waste the fine analogue capabilities of the use
 r's muscles.  I will present two human-computer interaction systems\, both
  designed from scratch using information theory. A person's gestures are a
  source of bits\, and the sentences they wish to communicate are the sink.
   We aim to maximize the number of bits per second conveyed from user into
  text. First\, "Dasher" is a communication system that can be driven by on
 e-dimensional or two-dimensional continuous gestures\, or by pressing butt
 ons. Users can achieve single-finger writing speeds of 35 words per minute
  and hands-free writing speeds of 25 words per minute. Dasher is free soft
 ware\, and it works in over one hundred languages. Second\, "Nomon" is a s
 election system using a single switch.  It adapts to the user's timing acc
 uracy\, can be used for any task traditionally solved by 'point and click'
 \, and (in contrast to most selection interfaces) can exploit information 
 about the probabilities of the alternatives.\n\nReferences\, see: \n\nwww.
 dasher.org.uk\n\nwww.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/nomon/\n\nBiosketch: David Ma
 cKay is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Camb
 ridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD 
 in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technolog
 y. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin C
 ollege. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning\,
  information theory\, and communication systems\, including the invention 
 of Dasher\, a software interface that enables efficient communication in a
 ny language with any muscle. He has taught Physics in Cambridge since 1995
 . Since 2005\, he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about en
 ergy. He has written two books\, both available for free online: Informati
 on Theory\, Inference\, and Learning Algorithms (CUP 2003)\; and Sustainab
 le Energy - without the hot air (UIT\, 2009). He was elected a Fellow of t
 he Royal Society on 14 May 2009.\n\n\n
LOCATION:West Road Concert Hall
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