🚀 go-pugleaf

In soc.culture.jewish Jacob Love <jl...@engin.umich.edu> wrote:
: I have to respond. Brendan McKay has repeatedly stated that he has
: demonstrated the the same phenomenon for the text of Moby Dick, and he
: has provided documentation.

Except that McKay's Moby Dick and War and Peace examples make the same
procedural mistake Drosnin does. He measures the probability of a
particular "code" after it was found, and thereby tries to discredit
the model used for computing the probability was measured by. However,
since there are an absurdly high number of possible "code", many must
be found in any text.

What needs be done is the reverse. Determine the odds of finding each
of a list of possible matches, and see if the law of large numbers
supports the prediction'.


I am more curious about McKay's May 29th experiment, which closely
duplicates Vintzum et al's methodology, with very different results.
It was exposed to criticism, and he was working on a revising the
experiment.  That's the last I heard.

Since Brian McKay is quite likely following this thread, I'd like
to hear how he's doing.

-mi

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Micha Berger (973) 916-0287      Help free Ron Arad, held by Syria 3914 days!
mi...@aishdas.org                         (16-Oct-86 - 18-Sep-97)
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