01-09-2019, 02:33 AM
The data is only as good as the transcript.
When I first started studying the VMS, I downloaded the Takahashi transcript. It only took a few minutes of checking the early pages to realize it was flawed and there was no point in using it. That's why I created my own.
That's not to say it is bad. It's reputed to be one of the better ones. But I didn't feel it was good enough. Many spaces are ignored. Some characters are ignored (like cccc patterns). The variety of endings in "daiin" are frequently ignored. Daiin is not as homogenous as the transcripts make it look.
There are still plenty of things that can be done with a flawed transcript as long as the proportion of problems is small... but people should be aware that it's flawed when they examine the data (it also depends exactly what one is trying to get out of it... a rough overview, or information about details).
When I first started studying the VMS, I downloaded the Takahashi transcript. It only took a few minutes of checking the early pages to realize it was flawed and there was no point in using it. That's why I created my own.
That's not to say it is bad. It's reputed to be one of the better ones. But I didn't feel it was good enough. Many spaces are ignored. Some characters are ignored (like cccc patterns). The variety of endings in "daiin" are frequently ignored. Daiin is not as homogenous as the transcripts make it look.
There are still plenty of things that can be done with a flawed transcript as long as the proportion of problems is small... but people should be aware that it's flawed when they examine the data (it also depends exactly what one is trying to get out of it... a rough overview, or information about details).
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