Re: VMS words and Roman numerals

["Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 29 Dec 2000, at 17:14, Rene Zandbergen wrote:
> I would like to think that the binomial distribution
> should be an explainable result of a relatively straightforward
> 'encoding' by the author. 

Yes, so do I, but I insist :-) unless we are sure that such a binomial 
distribution does not happen naturally in languages, I think it is a 
bit too optimistic to assume one could be sure of the way a 
dictionnary was generated.

By "not happening naturally" I mean going from a known dictionary 
and joining, discarding letters, abbreviating, inserting nulls, etc, to 
arrive to something similar to the vms in terms of word length.

My point is that one may end with such distribution by different 
procedures, one of which is Stolfi's slot machine.

More specifically, if the number of slots is increased, can one 
generate a distribution of word lengths like English, Latin,  French, 
Italian, etc?

Regards to all, happy new year.
Gabriel