[Blog Post] Rightward and Downward in the Voynich Manuscript - Patrick Feaster

[pfeaster]

Very interesting images, but what does the RGB / brightness exactly show in these images, could your please explain.

If,  for example Daiin, the brightness shows the left position, the image can not be correct because daiin does not have preferred position at the beginning of lines.

Brightness corresponds to greater prevalence in a given position.  Since submitting my previous post, I've simplified things a bit, so that the numerical pixel value at each point represents a straightforward fraction of the maximum value, with no adjustment for sRGB encoding.

Here are new grayscale images for [daiin] in Currier A and B, side by side.

   

It's the image for Currier B that shows a bright peak at the left of lines and the vertical center of paragraphs.  If I'm reading my spreadsheets correctly, in Currier B, about 30% of tokens of [daiin] are the first vord in a line; about 8.5% are the last vord in a line; and about 61.5% fall somewhere in the middle of the line.  In all of Currier B, by contrast, about 11.5% of vords are first or last in their lines, while about 77% fall somewhere in the middle.  So [daiin] does seem significantly overrepresented in the first line position in Currier B.  The image suggests that this overrepresentation is also limited to the vertical center of the paragraph.  I haven't double-checked that, but if it's true, then the anomaly would be even stronger than the line-position statistics would suggest by themselves.

If we were to overlay the images for Currier A and Currier B in two separate color channels, the bright peak would stand out in whatever color we've assigned to Currier B.  In the color image I shared earlier, it's yellowish.

I've also tried separating out the first and last lines of paragraphs and the first, second, and last vords of lines, since these are sometimes regarded as significant "absolute" positions.  If there are fewer than three lines, I assign whatever there is in the order first, last; and if there are fewer than four vords in a line, I assign whatever there is in the order first, last, second.   Here's what that approach looks like for [daiin] in Currier A and B:

   

From this it appears that [daiin] is also underrepresented as the second vord of a line, though I haven't looked into that further.

Color-coding can be used in a variety of ways to draw out contrasts.  Here's an example of a different kind, limited to Currier B: vords beginning [ok] are assigned to the blue channel, and vords beginning [ot] are assigned to the green channel.  Thus, [ok*] vords are more common in areas that look bluer, while [ot*] vords are more common in areas that look greener.

   

Here's a similar display, again for Currier B, showing vords beginning [qo]+gallows in blue and vords beginning [o]+gallows in green.

   

Three-way color combinations can be prettier but get harder to interpret.  Here, again for Currier B, is [chedy] in blue, [qokeedy] in green, and [qokaiin] in red.  The various shades represent areas in which those vords are differently concentrated.  Note also how the separate treatment of first/second/last vords and first/last lines draws out (or creates?) different patterns.