7 min read
CPS Clicking Techniques, and What the Counter Actually Measures
Jitter, butterfly, and drag clicking — how each produces its clicks, why peak CPS diverges from average, and why some of them are banned.
Test design
The scoring ladders, ladders, and rules behind the individual tests, written out so a score can be interpreted rather than merely reported.
Every test here is a small machine for producing a comparable number, and the interesting part is always the same: the rule that decides which attempts count and how they are weighted. This topic opens up those machines — what counts, what is discarded, why averages are used over maximums, and why accuracy is part of a speed score at all.
It covers the reasoning behind specific modes: why the choice-reaction test fixes four colours instead of two, why CPS tests report a peak second separately from an average, and what a digit-span test is really scoring when it looks like it is scoring memorisation.
If you want to know why a test scored you the way it did rather than only what you scored, this is the topic.
4 articles
7 min read
Digit Span, Chunking, and Why "Seven Plus or Minus Two" Is Not a Limit
Miller argued in bits, not digits. What a number memory test actually scores, where the wall arrives, and how chunking moves it.
6 min read
Five Trials or One: Why Averaging Beats Your Best Score
Your fastest attempt is mostly luck. What averaging five does to the error, why outliers stay in, and when the difference becomes detectable.
6 min read
How Choice Reaction Scoring Works, and Why Accuracy Is Part of It
Only correct trials count, which is what stops guessing from looking fast. Plus why Hick’s Law is the reason this mode fixes four colours.
Other topics
Measurement
4 articles
How a number from a browser gets produced, and what it can and cannot tell you. Apparatus effects, timing precision, latency, and why browser scores are not laboratory scores.
Interpreting scores
3 articles
What a reaction time actually means once you have one — reference ranges, statistical expectations, and the difference between a change you caused and a change you drifted into.