Numbers in my life – Right/Left click edition

First a question – depending on how numerical/empirical kind of a person you are, this will either make you ponder the question or perhaps the questioner.

Let us say for 10 working days (counting only days when you actually used the computer ) you logged the number of keystrokes and mouse clicks you made. If some software was doing it for you without your knowledge (you should not consciously manipulate them) and then you are required to wonder :

– Do you use left click more often or right click ? Of course, thats a no-brainer, but what is the ratio of your left clicks to right clicks ?

– What about keystrokes ? You know your nature of work – involving more typing or browsing etc. How many key strokes do you think you do with per day ?

– Now if there is a person who uses the right click more than the left click, what is his most likely profession ?

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Over the years I have promised several things on this blog – especially when I say something like – “will write on X another day/one of these days”, I have almost never done it (sheepishly yours) 😀 . Here is an exception. In this post on Oct 22nd, I said :

As a separate experiment, I have just downloaded the key counter that will help me “Keeps a running tally of all your keystrokes and mouse clicks. Shows how many keystrokes and mouse clicks you have made today, yesterday, and overall.” I will put up some data here in 2 months I guess :).

Okay, so I have the data, but will leave you to make sense of it. I have data for 12 days from Nov 9, 2006 to Nov 21st, 2006.

Average keystrokes per day – 41060

Average left clicks per day – 3250

Average right clicks per day – 490

So there, roughly 6.6 times more left clicks than right clicks, and 12.6 more keystrokes than left clicks.

I have the exact plot here, but rather noisy I would say.

At the rate of 40000 keystrokes a day, for 300 days a year, for the next 35 years, aah, makes it 420 million keystrokes.

I have to find a replacement now for “Maine baal dhoop main nahi sukhaye” ( not just because I am kinda balding ) to something that uses this chaar-so-bees-million keystrokes.

P.S : I know this data is probably of no real use to any of us, but without at least one measurement it appears to be me that is extremely hard to even give an approximate figure for how many times you use left click per day. 🙂