Journal tags: statistics

As promised, I’ve gathered the data from one of the exercises I administered at the dConstruct HTML5 and CSS3 workshop and totted the results up in a table.

There were 30 people in the workshop but I only managed to retrieve 22 results—I don’t know what happened to the missing eight sheets of answers. This is a smaller sampling than I was hoping for and I realise that it’s too small to be considered scientifically accurate but I think it’s still interesting to see the responses of 22 smart, savvy web developers.

Across the top (in the table header) are the possible answers; nine new elements in the HTML5 spec. Each row shows the answers given for each element as workshop attendees attempted to match up the names of the elements with the nine definitions provided from the spec. The most common answer in each case has been highlighted.

HTML5 Workshop Results

	article	aside	details	figure	footer	header	hgroup	nav	section
article	5	0	2	1	1	1	0	1	9
aside	1	11	1	3	2	0	0	0	2
details	1	6	8	1	4	0	0	0	0
figure	3	2	2	14	1	0	0	0	0
footer	0	0	10	0	10	1	0	0	1
header	0	0	0	2	0	16	0	4	0
hgroup	0	0	0	0	0	1	21	0	0
nav	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	19	2
section	12	0	0	0	1	1	1	0	7

Ideally, the table would show a nice uniform graph: a solid diagonal line from the top left left to the bottom right. The diagonal line is there but it isn’t exactly uniform.

For the record, here are the element names together with their correct definitions. I’ve included a little sparkline with each one to show the distribution of answers. A unanimous result would show one clear spike. Wobbly uneven sparklines indicate a corresponding uncertainty in the answers.

article

…a section of a page that consists of a composition that forms an independent part of a document, page, or site.

aside

…represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around it, and which could be considered separate from that content.

details

…additional information or controls which the user can obtain on demand.

figure

…some flow content, optionally with a caption, that is self-contained and is typically referenced as a single unit from the main flow of the document.

footer

…typically contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to related documents, copyright data, and the like.

header

…a group of introductory or navigational aids.

hgroup

…used to group a set of h1–h6 elements when the heading has multiple levels, such as subheadings, alternative titles, or taglines.

nav

…a section of a page that links to other pages or to parts within the page: a section with navigation links.

section

…a thematic grouping of content, typically with a heading, possibly with a footer.

There are some interesting results here; some of them surprising, some of them expected.

The most easily identified element is hgroup. That’s also the only element name that isn’t taken from an existing English word. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. When the name of an element is created specifically to describe what that element does, it’s no surprise that the name and the definition are tightly coupled.

I was expecting to see more confusion between aside and figure. Both elements serve a similar purpose and in my opinion, the names could be swapped around without changing the definitions in the spec. But the data doesn’t support my hypothesis.

The confusion around footer surprised me. I would have expected to see more confusion between footer and aside than between footer and details.

The most glaring problem lies with section and article. This doesn’t surprise me. At this point, section and article are practically indistinguishable. For a while there, article had some more optional attributes—cite and pubdate—but those have now been removed. Now section and article have the same content model and appear to cover much the same kind of content:

…a thematic grouping of content, typically with a heading, possibly with a footer.

…a section of a page that consists of a composition that forms an independent part of a document, page, or site.

Witness the recent article on HTML5 Doctor wherein Bruce attempts to clear up the confusion and points out where the HTML5 Doctor site has been getting it wrong. If it’s tough for those smart guys to figure out when to use section, article or div, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.

Choosing the right element would be easier if there were some clear rules like “You can only use sections within articles” or “You can only use articles within a section” but as it is, you can nest sections in articles and articles in a section. With that much rope, authors are likely to hang themselves, overdosing on the semantic freedom.

I don’t think there needs to be a section element and an article element. I don’t have a particularly strong opinion about which one should stay and which one should go but a little trimming is definitely in order.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to present this data to the list.