Relations among pattern studies?

[Emma May Smith]

I know that glyph similarity calculations have been done before, but I thought I would work them up based on transition probabilities. The score is total of absolute differences between members of a pair in the transitions to different glyphs. So if the probability of transition to [o] is .13 for [sh] but 0.17 for [ch], then .04 is added to the difference. The minimum difference is 0 for identical glyphs, and 2 for glyphs which have no overlapping transition probabilities.



In the chart below, [K, T, F, P] are bench gallows, [C, S] are benches, and [e, E, H, i, I, J] are one two and three [e] or [i]. Spaces were totally eliminated so aren't included in the plot or the transition statistics. (Also, the plot is symmetrical as there's no ordering information for the pairs, just similarity.)



   

The most interesting thing which jumps out at me is that [m]---which almost always finishes a word---is highly similar to [e]---which almost never finishes a word. The odd linestart statistics for [s], [d] and [y] make the line end look like a middle word position. Otherwise, I think the similarity is driven mostly by a few core relationships, such as the high likelihood of a following [y].

(I know it's not a great graph, but it's the one I have.)