Re: VMs: word database and binomial distribution

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  > [Knox:] Opps -- you said mutate to another same length word. I was
  > thinking of losing a few words. If I understand it, we are only
  > looking at word lengths so still would have no effect, so I think.

Well, consider a codebook that uses Roman numerals.

A single-letter mutation XLVII->XLLII would create a new word that did
not exist in the original text. On the other hand XLVII->XLIII could
destroy the only instance of XLVII in the text (and many words do
occur only once, per Zipf). So a single letter mutation may increment,
decrement, or preserve the WLD.

The same argument applies to the "binomial" code proposed in my page.
Namely, the codewords consist of a marker "#" followed by some subset
of the digits 1-9, in increasing order. Then the mutation #1278 ->
#1378 may decrement the WLD, #1278 -> #1298 may increment it.

All the best,

--stolfi
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