Re: Word matching at random (was Re: Turko-Sumerians

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#322

From: Mark Rosenfelder
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 1992 23:37

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Actually Spock would probably apply a little probability theory.  
Given n words, where p is the probability of a match of meaning,
the probability of r matches is

       n!         r         n-r
    ---------    p   (1 - p)
    r! (n-r)! 

The probability of any matches at all can be estimated by summing
up the results for r = 1, 2, 3, ....

For n = 6000, p = 1/6000, the results are quite consistent with
those of your numerical simulation.

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!caen!destroyer!ncar!uchinews!spssig.spss.com!markrose
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Word matching at random  (was  Re: Turko-Sumerians
Message-ID: <1992Aug7.233725.14381@spss.com>
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References: <Aug.7.18.00.24.1992.10977@pilot.njin.net>
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1992 23:37:25 GMT
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