8 articles

Articles

Benchmarks with their sources attached, and an honest account of what each number does and does not tell you.

• The magical number seven is a misquoteMiller called the number a coincidence. Modern estimates of working memory put raw capacity nearer four, and the only reliable way past the limit does not transfer.
• How much of your reaction time is your equipment?Refresh rate, panel lag, television picture modes and mouse polling, with the numbers that are arithmetic and the ones that are marketing.
• Sleep, caffeine and reaction timeWhat controlled studies measured: how much sleep restriction costs you, why you cannot feel it, and exactly how much faster caffeine makes you.
• Does aim training actually work?Aim trainers are reliable measuring instruments. Whether they make you better at the game you play is a question nobody has answered with a controlled trial.
• What is a good typing speed?The average from 136 million keystrokes, why touch-typing training buys less than you would expect, and the one habit that actually separates fast typists from slow ones.
• What is a good CPS score?Clicks per second by technique and duration, where those ranges actually come from, and the Minecraft mechanic that makes most clicking advice obsolete.
• The fastest reaction time ever recordedThe famous 101-millisecond record has no source. Here is what has actually been measured, what the 0.100-second false-start rule is really based on, and why it is a policy number rather than a limit of the body.
• Average reaction time by ageWhat large controlled studies actually measured: the average simple visual reaction time, how fast it slows with age, and which part of the response the ageing affects.