6.0679 Qs: Statistical Methods; Text Comparison S/W (2/51)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 15 Apr 1993 15:05:26 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0679. Thursday, 15 Apr 1993.


(1) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 93 08:45:32 PDT (32 lines)
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: McCarty query re humanities computing articles

(2) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 11:17:27 -0500 (19 lines)
From: Edward Kovach <kovach@lees.cogsci.uiuc.edu>
Subject: a query

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 93 08:45:32 PDT
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: McCarty query re humanities computing articles

I also join my voice to Willard's, particularly for a good,
short introduction to the use of statistical methods in
literary analysis.

However, my need is a little bit more pressing since I have to
start explaining these matters to a class within the next few
days. They are working with the U. of Toronto's MTAS and TACT
programs, and there are numerous terms which the former program
in particular uses which are a mystery to me:
Hapax dislegomena (I know what a hapax legomena is)
Coefficient of skewness
Coefficient of kurtosis
Herdan's characteristic
Yule's characteristic
Carroll TTR

Of course, understanding how these are calculated is only the first
step. What do they mean?

Roseann Potter's survey in the 25th anniversary issue of CHUM gives
a good overview of the kind of quantitative work done recently, but
it assumes a certain amount of prior knowledge which neither I nor
my students have.

HELP!

Charles Faulhaber
UC Berkeley
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 11:17:27 -0500
From: Edward Kovach <kovach@lees.cogsci.uiuc.edu>
Subject: a query

Has anyone had experience in using software which compares two texts
and on the basis of their similarities/differences determines what is
the probability that the texts were written by the same author? If so...

a. What was the software and where can it be obtained?
b. Were the results good or poor?
c. Would you base any serious research on the results?

Please send replies to kovach@lees.cogsci.uiuc.edu

Thanks in advance.

Ed Kovach