Posted by John Nichols on October 10, 2003 at 14:28:00 from 165.91.196.181 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: andom TAR Board generator was Re: Books or Records was Desert Island, was The Shipping Forecast (British Isles) posted by Ian E-N on October 10, 2003 at 11:23:33:
If I remember correctly there is a field of computer science and english study that breaks the works of authors into a statistical analysis of the distribution of single letters, two letter and three letter groups.
I understand from a very long dead memory that this is the method used to try and decide if a work can be attributed to a specific author. Shakespeare springs to mind.
One can of course take the database and generate new words and sentences that sound great but are absolutlely meaningless. I have seen in done in Scientific American and if I could remember the year I would try and find it, but this was the late 80's.
John