I thought this may help to design a new keyboard layout better (from scientific/statistic perspective) than Dvorak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard) which is based on research more than 80 years ago.
But people don't write just English words. Norvig dismisses any word with any character other than a-z, but those words still get typed. As do numbers, punctuation and not-real-words like names.
Redesigning a keyboard should be based on what people need to type, rather than on how English words are structured.
The results seem consistent with previous data. There are many recent layouts (e.g. Colemak[1]) which attempt further optimization, but simulations show little actual difference in strain (~5%) between those. They are all better than qwerty in this regard, but optimizing any any more is a clear case of diminishing returns.
It is actually much more difficult to model finger strain that the english language (in terms of n-grams). Subjective assessments vary a lot, and the quest for the optimal layout is bathed in controversy. Beyond switching away from qwerty, the most significant gains will be made by hardware solutions, like using an ergonomic keyboard (such as the very promising ErgoDox [2]). Other optimizations may come in the form of chorded keyers and better predictive technology. In this last case, the Google data may prove useful.
@gokfar: Seems like you have some background in keyboard layout optimization. Are you currently working on anything related now? I am and would great to chat with you about it if you're in the MV area.
