Re: [O] Efficiency of Org v. LaTeX v. Word

[Achim Gratz]

Am 26.12.2014 um 23:47 schrieb Ken Mankoff:
> People here might be interested in a publication from [2014-12-19 Fri]
> available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115069
>
> Title: An Efficiency Comparison of Document Preparation Systems Used
> in Academic Research and Development
>
> Summary: Word users are more efficient and have less errors than even
> experienced LaTeX users.

The way researcher efficiency is defined in that "study" completely 
misses the purpose of scientific publishing and it goes downhill from 
there.  The statistics are pseudo-scientific smokes and mirrors, no 
control groups, no normalization and not a single hint of why it should 
be acceptable to use normal distributions for something that clearly 
isn't normally distributed other than the obvious convenience of drawing 
wild conclusions from a small sample size.

I'm still not sure if this isn't an elaborate joke, but I'm afraid not.

> Someone here should repeat experiment and add Org into the mix, perhaps
> Org -> ODT and/or Org -> LaTeX and see if it helps or hurts. I assume
> Org would trump LaTeX, but would Org -> ODT or Org -> X -> DOCX (via
> pandoc) beat straight Word?

Repeating a deeply flawed "study" that seems designed to support some 
pre-conceived notion or preference of the authors isn't going to produce 
any new insights and I'm quite certain that there is better research 
into the differences of WYSIWIG vs. non-WYSIWIG publication systems 
and/or researcher efficiency.  If a reasearcher is nothing more than a 
typist that needs to produce pages of texts, tables and equations in a 
prescribed format in the least amount of time motivated by a monetary 
prize, we wouldn't need researchers at all.  That would incidentally 
save much more money than having them all switch from LaTeX to Word, so 
let's stop funding research.


--
Achim.

(on the road :-)