Q

[Benjamin G. Sayre]

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, argus. wrote:

> I beg to differ that results of statistical analysis of texts are
> objective!  that's trusting your statistician a bit too far.

No, I agree with you here.  I think the trick is to try discussing this
with a statistician or programmer.  Can you convince somebody who has
faith in this algorithm that there's something fundamentally inaccurate
about the implicit hypotheses concerning language which are entailed by
such an algorithm?  Is such a conversational feat possible, and if not how
can you say that the statistician/programmer is wrong?  

> in fact ive heard that these statistical analysises of texts are
> suprisingly non-helpful.  apparently because true artists can change
> their style well enough that there arent any real "fingerprints"
> in syntax etc.  i suppose mis-spellings would be a much better
> indication.  

This is the response that I had too, but the person who told me about the
algorithm insisted that it might not matter whether the artist tries to
mask their style or not.  After she said this the discussion descended to
mutual gainsaying.


> 
> this of course applies to the Wanda Question, which isnt, at least
> for me.  :>
> 

It does, for example, apply to this question, but at present I'm more
interested in discussing the algorithm itself.  If it seemed likely that
the thing works, then it becomes a question of how to apply it to such an
example as the Wanda Question.  (I hope this doesn't mar the relevance of
my question to the interests of this group listing!)


This algorithm would have to emerge from something like cognitive science,
yes?  In the latest issue of _Philosophy and Literature_ there is an
article called "Cognitive Science and the Future of Literary Studies".
This article seems to lend some credence to such things as stylometry, or
at least suggests a possible trend in such directions.  Personally, I
can't help thinking that stylometry is to literary theory as craniology is
to neurology, but then again I'm no authority on the matter either.


Ben