<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1264" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <DIV>Doug Henwood wrote:</DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>> >Sometime in 1930's Mozafer Sherif  conducted following experiment. First he<BR>> >asked the subjects to rank ten different authors. Than he gave them what he<BR>> >told were excerpts from those authors and asked to rank those excerpts. In<BR>> >reality all of the excerpts were from one author, Stevenson. You know the<BR>> >rest.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>></FONT><BR>> This all seems like an idiotic exercise. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This is an ingenious experiment, which is now considered classic.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>>What's the point of <BR>> "ranking" authors in the first place? </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>To investigate the correlation between the rank of an author  and the rank of an excerpt "authored" by him.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>>But the sort of stuff you <BR>> doesn't prove much of anything: you select snippets of things,  prose <BR>> or visual art, </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I got  such complains too:</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>"I know the book, I did my thesis on it. I wouldn't have made any mistakes if some of the slots hadn't been filled automatically. I suppose this is what happened. "</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Regarding visual art. If you refer to my "True art or a fake quiz"( <A href="http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~simkin/true_art_or_fake_art.html"><FONT face=Arial size=2>http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~simkin/true_art_or_fake_art.html</FONT></A> )</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>- all images are of the whole paintings.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>> I'm sure you could <BR>> play similar games with Shelley, Dickinson, Joyce, or Sidney Sheldon. <BR> </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I haven't read any of those authors except for Joyce. It does not seem to me that his prose sounds like a machine translation.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Can you give an example?</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>> What's the point?</FONT><BR></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Fun</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Mikhail Simkin<BR>---<BR><A href="http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~simkin/">http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~simkin/</A></FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></BODY></HTML>