Let there be meaning

[MarcoP]

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This post is too long for me to read in full. I read the conclusions at the end and skimmed through the rest.

I don't know much about statistics, but I'd like to comment on this statement:

Using the same logic as above, we take two locations for ytoa and compute the probability of yfa to appear in one of remaining 6 slots in either location. 2 * 6 * 2 / (1033 - 1 - 7) = 2.3%. Which is still very low.

I don't know why 2.3% should be regarded as "very low". When one cherry-picks complex patterns from anything that is not totally trivial, it's easy to find patterns that do not occur frequently. By making the patterns more and more specific, probabilities can be made arbitrarily low.

For instance, we can consider You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

• 10 NUMBERS FROM 1 TO 500:
133   499   165   144   207   215   491   361   336   400

We can split the 10 numbers into 2 sequences of 5 each:

133   499   165   144   207
215   491   361   336   400

The probability that the last two numbers in both sequences have 0 as second digit is 1%.

In both sequences, the second number starts with "49". The probability that this happens is (1/100)^2=0.0001%.

For positions 2, 3 and 5, the numbers in the two lists share the same second digit (9, 6, 0). The probability that this happens 3 or more times is 0.86%.

Plotting the two sequences, one sees that they go up and down together, following the pattern up-down-down-up. The probability that the two follow the same pattern is 1/(2^4)=6.25%. The probability that both show the specific pattern up-down-down-up is the square of that figure, i.e. 0.39%.
   

Of course, given any two sets of numbers or words, one can make up numberless patterns of this kind (the longer the sequences and the numbers, the more patterns can be found).


The post discusses these two sequences of Voynichese words (this the order in which they appear in the post, which is different from the order in the manuscript):

f67r2: ytoaiin, yfain, opcholdy, ofar.oeoldan, okain.am, okal, dolchsody
f72r3: ytoar.shar, yfary, opalal, oraiiral, oletal, aral, octho

The conclusion is:

There is 99.42% probability that two sets of 7 labels on f67r2 and f73r3 are textually related to one another (from the fact that their probability to co-occur by chance is only 0.58%).

Some observations:

• Stating that "textually related" follows from "unlikely to occur by chance" is a non-sequitur. Many non-random patterns have been spotted in the Voynich manuscript, e.g. word structure (Stolfi), line patterns, word repetition, different "dialects" for the different sections (Currier). We know very well that Voynichese is not random and has structure at some level: this does not imply that the text is meaningful.
  
• It's not clear why the similarities between the two lists are discussed, but not the differences (e.g. in most cases word lengths are markedly different, in 3 out of seven cases the number of words in the labels are different, suffixes only match in one case).
  
• The seven labels from f72r3 are part of a set of 30 labelled stars for the Cancer page. The page is part of a sequence of 10 zodiac signs (one page is missing), each containing 30 labelled stars. Therefore (contrary to f67r2) those seven labels do not look likely to have anything to do with the seven planets but seem more likely to be related with the thirty degrees that make up each zodiac sign (see Panofsky's reference to ms BAV Reg.lat.1283a).
  
• The presence of several circle-gallows prefixes is typical of Voynichese labels (where circles are o a y and gallows t k p f). See also histogram You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. While only about 16% of paragraph words start with such sequences, the rate is 48% for labels. It seems that this wider phenomenon could help in the analysis of the prefixes in the two sets of seven labels.