Keyboard Layout, Is Inverted Number Row Better?

Some keyboard layouts have inverted number row. Is inverted number row more efficient? Let's answer that question.

Keyboard with inverted number row includes: French Layout, AZERTY layout, and Programer's Dvorak, NEO, Bépo.

Here's inverted number row:

!@#$% ^&*()
12345 67890

I have tried the inverted number row, for a few weeks around 2005, but in the end i abandoned it.

One problem is that the numbers are needed often too, especially a sequence of numbers like credit cards, ID numbers, dates “2010-08-30” or if you do a lot scientific programing with code such as x^2 - 1/5 * 1.6. But now you need to press Shift for the numbers.

And if you type Chinese with pinyin input method (most popularly used), you need to type one of the number 1 2 3 4 about every 6 keystrokes.

[see Chinese Input Methods]

Is Numbers Used More Often or the Symbols?

is numbers used more often or the symbols? The answer depends on what type of text you type.

• If you code lots of C, Java, Ruby, JavaScript: symbols is more frequent.
• If you do scientific programing a lot, for example, Mathematica, Julia, R, number is more frequent.
• If you don't program but writes lots of blogs or chat: number is more frequent.

To compute and plot your own, see Character Frequency Counter