Re: VMs: RE: Nasa Astronomy Picture of The Day

[Gabriel Landini <G.Landini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 24 January 2005 06:45, Knox Mix wrote:
> Dennis wrote:
> >     Here, I found this:
> >
> > http://bb.nightskylive.net/asterisk/viewtopic.php?t=349&postdays=0&postor
> >der=asc&start=165
> >
> > Helen Joined: 22 Jan 2005 Posts: 6
> >
> > PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 6:56 pm
> > Archer - the mathematical distributions of the "letters/words" in the MS
> > aren't encountered in language but are quite common in card games, dice
> > throws, casino slot machines and so on.
> >
> > ----------------------
> >
> >     Is this true?

No, it is not. But I thought that we all knew this...

The distribution of words is a inverse power law -- which is what the great 
majority of languages exhibit (Zipf's law) and the distribution of characters 
is far from being uniformly distributed (which is what throwing a dice would 
produce).

Cheers,

Gabriel
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