[Blog Post] The Pattern of the Wheel on 57v

[Jorge_Stolfi]

But generally, this is a variation of "other <...> were made in a certain way, hence the Voynich MS probably was made in the same way", which can be a good argument, for example, for some physical properties of the book, because there are quite a few other manuscripts that are physically similar.

That is also a good point.  Statistics of feature XYZ among other manuscripts would be significant if the VMS had been chosen by some criterion that does not involve that feature, directly or indirectly.  Like, if we went to a random medieval library and picked a random volume from the shelves, then, to guess whether it is vellum or parchment, it would be appropriate to consider the statistics of material among manuscript books from that epoch and region.  Or if we picked a random item from a pile of encrypted manuscript books and wanted to guess the topic, it would make sense to check the statistics of topics among encrypted manuscript books of that epoch etc.

But the VMS was chosen to be the topic of our studies because it is extraordinary in several aspects, such as the use of an invented script, incomprehensible illustrations, bizarre plants, etc.  It is in a category of its own, not a random sample from some category with many members.  "Bizarre manuscript books with invented script, incomprehensible diagrams, and bizarre plants written the 1400s that were in Central Europe in the 1600s" is not a well-defined category that can provide meaningful statistics... 

All the best, --jorge