For example, if I spell “umportant”, it’s easy for us to recognise that it’s supposed to be “important”, but autocorrect insists that it’s something like “umbrella”, or I guess more logically “unimportant”, even though “important” is only 1 correction away.
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These are real examples from my phone (Samsung Galaxy):
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Wuick gets the suggestions Wicked, Which, Wucky, Whickham, Whicker, Wick, Wickets, Wicket, and Wickham. None of which are “Quick”, what I intended to write.
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Nrown gets the suggestions Now, Nr own, Noon, Nowhere, Nr owner, Nr owns, and Nr owners. None of which are “Brown”.
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Dence gets the suggestions Dance, December, Denied, Dancers, Decent, Dense, Dench, and Deuce. None of which are “Fence”.
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It’s bothered me for years that it never ever picks up on a misspelt first letter.
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Edit: I tried “umportant”, and it actually comes with 0 suggestions. Not umbrella, not unimportant, not even “important”. But “inportant” and “ikportant” and even “iqportant” are all recognised as “important”.
In: Technology
The most common way to implement autocomplete is with a data structure called a Trie combined with and algorithm that calculates the likelihood the word is misspelled by the number of character flips it takes to get from word A to word B. The more letters you have right from the start, the more accurate it is. There is a name for the algorithm, it is escaping me.
Because of the nature of a Trie, if you get earlier letters wrong the space it much search to find your intended target is MUCH larger and therefore can be less accurate. Additionally, as you type more, the trie can be updated to include more common combinations of letters and therefore predict your target more accurately.
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