Talk:Steering law

message: Currently the article refers to a "bird's eye view of the tunnel" which makes little sense in terms of idiomatic English.  That idiom refers to what a sharp-eyed hawk could see flying high above the Earth - it does not have the same meaning as "top down" view or "God's eye" view (or even "fifty thousand foot" view, which implies a lack of clarity).  A bird flying high above a tunnel sees only the entrance and exit points!  It would be better to avoid idioms like these all together, since they are essentially slang and quite likely to confuse anyone who doesn't have English as their milk tongue ;) but if you must use an idiom, at least use the right one.  --Charlie  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.180.229 (talk) 14:45, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: "bird's eye" view

message: I feel that it is entirely inappropriate for the so-called steering law to be called Accot's law. Accot was about 26 years late in coming up with this law. many of us know it as Drury's law after its original developer Colin Drury of State University of New York Buffalo. Accot is aware that Drury was the first to come up with this law and i am sure that he must be embarrassed that it has been put in his name. 26 years and many publications is a travesty of justice in naming a law. The problem appears to be that people working in HCI do not read other journals that publish similar material
Errol Hoffmann, PO box 89 Halls Gap, Vic 3381 Australia
* Please don't type in all-uppercase (I've reformatted the above post); it impairs legibility and might be seen as shouting. Note I've removed the following text from the second paragraph; it needs citations and cleanup before it might be worth re-inserting:
: (Actually first published in the journal Ergonomics by Colin Drury in 1971, 26 years prior to Accot acknowledging it -- to many it is known as Drury's law as he was certainly the discoverer of the law. To call it Accot's law is far from correct and the error must be corrected. Credit where it is due)
: Irrel 17:25, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've added some references to earlier work by Drury and by Rashevsky.  I haven't had time to look up and read the work by Drury or by Rashevsky, however it is discussed a bit in the Zhai, Accot, and Woltjer (2004) article.  I trust that Prof. Errol Hoffmann has some valid concerns over calling the steering law "Accot's law", or the "Accot-Zhai" law, so perhaps a compromise would be to change the name of the article to "Steering law".  However, from the discussion in Zhai, Accot, and Woltjer (2004), it's not clear to me how Drury's prior work was empirically verified.  Was it verified with a driving task involving an automobile?  Or with users holding a pointing device?  Would it be fair to say that the task tested by Accot and Zhai, where the user steers with a pointing device and a bird's eye view of the tunnel, had never been tested before Accot and Zhai's work?  Would it also be fair to say that the mathematical formulation given by Accot and Zhai is more general?  If so, these things could be pointed out in a revised wikipedia article. Perhaps the Steering law in a general sense can be attributed to Rashevsky and/or Drury, however perhaps the demonstration of its validity in tasks with hand-held pointing devices and a bird's eye view of the tunnel is properly due to Accot and Zhai. MichaelMcGuffin 20:14, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Prior work, attribution, and name of the law

message: (BEGIN: note added by Shumin Zhai, 00:13, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, well, yet another example of Stigler's law – No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.   Solo Owl   08:53, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Response by Shumin Zhai

message: Anyone who has ever driven a car (or navigated through cascading submenus) knows that you have to slow down at a sharp curve. As presented here, the Steering Law ignores this complication. This a serious deficiency.
Have any of the discoverers, or other researchers, acknowledged this shortcoming? If so, Wikipedia should mention that. If anyone has attempted to modify the Steering Law to account for the amount of curvature, that should be mentioned also.   Solo Owl   08:49, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Steering through sharp curves