Re: VMs: Re: entropy, shorthand systems, gallows characters

[steve ekwall <ekwall2@xxxxxxxx>]

1st & last letters are interesting too :-)

 Subject: Read This..
> 
> 
> Typoglycemia  
> 
> 
> Don't  delete this because it looks weird. Believe
> it or not you can read it  
> ..... just try reading it as fast as you can and you
> will amaze  yourself and 
> find out what this is all about at the same time.  
> START  NOW:
> 
> I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd
> waht I was rdanieg The  
> phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to
> rscheearch taem at  Cmabrigde 
> Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the
> ltteers in a  wrod are, the olny 
> iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be
> in the  rghit pclae. The 
> rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it
> wouthit a  porbelm. Tihs 
> is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter
> by istlef,  but the wrod 
> as a wlohe. Such a cdonition is arppoiately cllaed
> Typoglycemia  :)-
> 
> Amzanig huh? Yaeh and yuo awlyas thought slpeling
> was  ipmorantt. 
> 
>  
> ____________________________________
> 
 

 Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 16:46:17 -0500
 From: Larry Roux <LRoux@xxxxxxx>
 Reply-To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
 To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
 Subject: Re: VMs: Re: entropy, shorthand systems, gallows characters
 
 "the "s" in "sh", isn't an "s" at all"  - Correct!!  I have seen
 examples where the sh is really ch with something above.  A better
 representation might be c'h than sh.
 
 This is the problem with trying to derive statistics and entropy
 studies.  Without knowing the glyphs it is hard to determine what to
 feed into the calculations.  Bad input bad output.
 
 Lastly, shorthand also has glyphs for words.  While the symbol for
 "this" and "and" are /sort of/ shortened forms, they really are symbols
 for the words themselves.  Gregg shorthand has motions for "th" "sh"
 etc.
 
 So:  
 
 "This is an apple"
 
 may look like:
 "[th]s s n apl"
 
 I would think that shorthand would raise the entropy (that is, lowering
 the ability to predict the next letter) because you are in effect
 throwing out the rules of the particular language to increase speed. 
 "n" may be in, on, or an.   Some efficiency is lost as one must
 understand the context of a word within a sentence to de-shorthand it. 
 It is doubtful that any two people writing shorthand would write the
 same text in the same way too.  Heck, the same person might write the
 text differently at different times.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Larry Roux
 Syracuse University
 lroux@xxxxxxx
 
 
 >>> nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 3/28/2005 4:13:30 PM >>>
 Hi everyone,
 
 At 11:57 28/03/2005 -0500, Wayne Durden wrote:
 >In short, I am not yet convinced entropy studies related to shorthand
 >systems for speed to keep up with normal speech would apply to a
 method
 >designed to capture as accurately as possible the soundstream where
 speed of
 >transcription is not a factor, and the latter method might make most
 sense
 >if the scribe doesn't speak well the language he is capturing.
 
 When looking at the VMs with shorthand in mind, don't forget to take
 into 
 account the various strategies, such as notae (extra symbols),
 tachygraphy 
 (symbols that are quick to write), phonetic rendering (f for ph, etc),
 
 contraction (missing internal letters), abbreviation (missing terminal
 
 letters), etc. Rngs r nt th nly frt! :-)
 
 >Also, at one point in my notes I captured some discussion related to
 the
 >label with the Pisces illustration but I didn't capture the source
 enabling
 >me to go back to it and can't find it via Google.  It may have been
 Pelling
 >as I have that written down in proximity?  The gist of the comment was
 that
 >the label was too short to have make much sense in the context with
 Pisces.
 
 Googling for "otolal" will probably retrieve most of the posts you're 
 looking for. :-)
 
 FWIW, this word is almost an exemplar of what I imagine a verbose
 cipher 
 would look like, where "ot-ol-al" would most likely represent a set of
 
 consonants (like PCS) expanded out into pairs. Other Voynichese letters
 (in 
 particular <s>) rarely appear in pairs (so, I think "os" pairs are
 probably 
 "or" pairs that have been incorrectly corrected: and the "s" in "sh",
 isn't 
 an "s" at all).
 
 Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 
 
 
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