TPPM _The Gift_: Less hyphens, Word count per: "redblk -q"

[Dave Monroe]

   "'Well. Recall Zipf's Principle of Least Effort: if
we plot the frequency of a word P sub n against its
rank-order n on logarithmic axes,' babbling into her
silence, even her bewilderment graceful, 'we should of
course get something like a straight line ... however
we've data that suggest the curves for
certain--conditions, well, they're actually quite
different--schizophrenics for example tend to run a
bit flatter in the upper part then progressively
steeper--a sort of bow shape ... I think with this
chap, this Roland, that we're on to a classical
paranoiac--'
   "'Ha.'  That's a word she knows.  'Thought I saw
you brighten up there when he said "turned against."
   "'"Against," "opposite," yes you'd he amazed at the
frequency with this one.'
   "'What's the most frequent word?' asks Jessica. 
'Your number one.'
   "'The same as it's always been at these affairs,'
replies the statistician, as if everyone knew:
'death.'" (GR, Pt. I, p. 32)

And see as well ...

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/info.html#zipf

--- Glenn Scheper <glenn_scheper at earthlink.net> wrote:

> http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/gift.html
> 
> You know, sometimes you can really speed your
> intake of big texts by only reading each unique
> word once, as least to determine if there were
> no words of interest throughout the whole text....

And that's a good idea, including a link to the text
in each and every post.  Thanks again, Glenn ...


		
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