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Schwarzenegger gives California Legislature a Hidden Finger

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Re: Schwarzenegger gives California Legislature a Hidden Finger

#4
post #3
post #2

Anyone cares to calculate the odds of this happening by accident?

(1/26)^7 .. without getting too fancy with any sort of linguistic probabilities...

= about 8,000,000,000 to 1

But capitalization and spacing was correct too.

Re: Schwarzenegger gives California Legislature a Hidden Finger

#6
post #3
post #2

Anyone cares to calculate the odds of this happening by accident?

(1/26)^7 .. without getting too fancy with any sort of linguistic probabilities...

That's the odds of it happening in 7 specific lines. But what are the odds of it happening by chance at any point in time to any person of Schwarzenegger's importance or higher?

Re: Schwarzenegger gives California Legislature a Hidden Finger

#7
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1/26)^7 .. without getting too fancy with any sort of linguistic probabilities...

= about 8,000,000,000 to 1 But capitalization and spacing was correct too.

Capitalization would be correct in almost all cases. You always capitalize first letter and chances are, first word of each line won't be the beginning of a sentence. Ditto for spacing, 3-5 line paragraphs are fairly common.

Re: Schwarzenegger gives California Legislature a Hidden Finger

#8
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

= about 8,000,000,000 to 1 But capitalization and spacing was correct too.

Capitalization would be correct in almost all cases. You always capitalize first letter and chances are, first word of each line won't be the beginning of a sentence. Ditto for spacing, 3-5 line paragraphs are fairly common.

How do you figure "almost all"? Even if the text could only contain paragraphs of length 3 and 4, the spacing alone would be incorrect in half the cases (assuming that a 3-4 and 4-3 split is equally likely).

(Of course, we are leaving aside the fact that the full body of the message contains an additional one-line paragraph, which could also be considered part of a correctly capitalized and spaced message.)

Re: Schwarzenegger gives California Legislature a Hidden Finger

#9
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalization would be correct in almost all cases. You always capitalize first letter and chances are, first word of each line won't be the beginning of a sentence. Ditto for spacing, 3-5 line paragraphs are fairly common.

How do you figure "almost all"? Even if the text could only contain paragraphs of length 3 and 4, the spacing alone would be incorrect in half the cases (assuming that a 3-4 and 4-3 split is equally likely). (Of course, we are leaving aside the fact that the full body of the message contains an additional one-line paragraph, which could also be considered part of a correctly capitalized and spaced message.)

One would have to analyze all previous relevant correspondence out of the AS's office as to measure vocabulary and other structural elements.

It would be a fun project.

Re: Schwarzenegger gives California Legislature a Hidden Finger

#10
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1/26)^7 .. without getting too fancy with any sort of linguistic probabilities...

That's the odds of it happening in 7 specific lines. But what are the odds of it happening by chance at any point in time to any person of Schwarzenegger's importance or higher?

Just multiply those odds by the percentage of people that qualify as important.
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