VMs: Re: VMs as Numbers

[Bruce Grant <bgrant@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Speaking of encoded Roman numerals, a dead giveaway ought to be the presence of
seven different symbols, four of which appear in multiples (I, X, C, M) and
three of which do not (V, L, D),  and with certain forbidden diagraph patterns:

     IV,  VI,  IX,  XI,  XV =>  OK        VX => not OK
     XL, LX, XC, CX, CL =>  OK        LC => not OK  and so on

Bruce Grant

robertjf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Folks
>
> A quick thought.  If the VMs is mostly encoded numbers,
> then there is a fairly powerful test of this hypothesis.
>
> Just as Zipf's Law predicts word frequency, so Benford's
> Law predicts the frequencies of the initial digits of a
> sequence of numbers.  In a nutshell, P(n) = log(n+1) - log(n)
>
> Assuming we can identify the initial digit, and assuming also
> we can identify the base (surely 10 for encoded Roman
> numerals), then all we have to do is translate into Arabic
> decimal notation and compute the frequencies.
>
> Hope that's vagely useful
>
> Robert