VMs: RE: Pairing [was; No stats no fun ---> no stats no blinkers! :-)]

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barbara wrote:

> The fourth is how many pairings actually (or potentially via different
> counts of the Mss) actually exist? The hypothetical number of possible
> pairings must be huge (the heat here in southern england is frying my
> brain so I can't recall if formula's n^n or [n!] ). Even allowing for
> contractions, abbreviations, truncations etc etc surely only a few
> hundred would be needed to encipher any language thus. If it turns out
> that the pairings in the VMS run into several hundreds, or even
> thousands, where does that leave the pairing theory?

This has been one of my questions as well.  I understand where Nick is
trying to go with his idea, but I don't 'see the end' of the idea, in the
sense that I think it takes things a bit far.  Here's why -
http://voynich.info/vgbt/xcrptn/digraphs.pdf

Since each section has different stats, I'm only looking at one at present,
the herbal section.  There are indeed hundreds, over 1,000, (1,249) unique
digraphs in this section between CL-A (ha variant) and CL-B (hb variant).
Of all these, only 37 by my count occur more than 1% of the time.  Those
that occur over 1% of the time fall into three main categories, already
covered by Currier.  Those categories are 1)word-intial digraphs,
2)word-ending digraphs, and 3)digraphs made up of the last letter of one
word and the beginning letter of the next.  One or two odd ones, the "c8"
for instance, were also covered in Currier statistics as part of the "c89"
word-ending set.

The one thing this *does* say is that there is little statistical evidence
for any consideration of "pairs" beyond the three general statistics listed
above, and little to support the idea of plaintext words beginning and
ending in the middle of VMS "words".  Nick will come up with something to
demonstrate that this is not necessarily true, I'm most certain (I love ya,
Nick).  The above counts are only to present some of the evidence that makes
me skeptical of the idea.

I don't think the "pair" idea is a dead end however.  Only that certain
"pairs" are an essential part of the construction.  I would surmise that if
these didn't at least exist in a table, they were memorized sets favored by
the author.  And something I would point out, if someone were to graph this
for themselves - omit the "pairs" that are over 1% and the stats start to
look a whole lot like low-form polyalphabetics.  Take into account that
mutants and diacritic variants may be "instructional", and the few common
digraphs take on a whole new meaning.

Just a thought.

GC



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