Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!udel!mmdf
From: GWO110%URIACC.BITNET@brownvm.brown.edu (F. Michael Theilig)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: User comparison study
Message-ID: <24617@snow-white.udel.EDU>
Date: 15 Jul 90 16:41:57 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 63


     I remember someone posting about a user comparison study between
 IBM and Mac users.  They merely stated that the Mac users were to the
 disadvantage.  I found an article in last weekends Providence Journal
 Bulliten called "Mac users less literate than IBM users?"  Here it is:

 --------

     Excerpt from the Business section of the Providence Sunday Journal
     July 8, 1990  (reprinted without permission.)

     "Mac users less literate than IBM users?"
     By L.R. Shannon
     New York Times News Service

     Most writers need all the help they can get.  If a recently
 published study is to be believed, those who write on a Macintosh
 computer may need more than those who write on an IBM.

     The study is called "Student Writing: Can the Machine Maim the
 Message?" by Marcia Peoples Halio, assistant director of the writing
 program at the English department of the University of Delaware.

     It was published in the January 1990 issue of Academic Computing.

     Since 1895, the University of Delaware has offered freshmen
 composition students a choice of either Mac or IBM computers and
 an equal amount of training on each.  In 1987, when Halio taught
 her first Mac section, she received an unpleasant suprise.

     "Never before in 12 years of teaching had I seen such a sloppy
 bunch of papers," she wrote.  "Words were misspelled; commas were
 placed haphazardly; semicolons were virtually nonexistant or placed
 by means of 'breath' punctuation rules; and such fine points as
 quotation marks, apostrophes, and question marks were treated with
 gay abandon."

     In addition, the Mac-wielding students chose essay topics such
 as fast food, rock music and relationships; the IBM section preferred
 essays on capital punishment, teenage pregnancy and nuclear war.

     "On the other hand, the papers that the Mac class turned in were
 often very creatively illustrated," she continued.

     Subsequent discussions with other teachers and a computer analysis
 of randomly selected compositions confirmed her impression.

     The Mac students wrote shorter and less complex sentences at about
 four grade levels lower than the IBM students.  The research will
 continue.

 --------

     My interpretation of the above article is that people who go out
 of their way to avoid doing work chose Macintosh.  I'd like to see the
 study.

 ----
      F. Michael Theilig  -  The University of Rhode Island at Little Rest
                            GWO110 at URIACC.Bitnet
                            GKZ117 at URIACC.Bitnet

"Gooooood coffee."