17-02-2026, 10:46 AM
Great post, Dunsel. I like these kinds of analyses, since they attempt to get closer to the heart of what Voynichese is.
I'm not a great statistician, so just some general thoughts.
1. Some of the differences you discuss would disappear when somehow normalized for text length. Unique tokens, hapax, reuse... So I wonder if your whole first section could be summarized as "Q20 has many words per page"?
[*]2. I am very interested in ways to kind of smoothen out and "repair" things. If it's always "aiin" but then suddenly "oiin", we may wonder whether the thing that looks like "o" was actually supposed to be one. I also think splitting hapax that are compounds is a valid strategy.
[*]Edit distance 1 is also a good way to account for scribal and transcription errors. However, edit distance 2 and 3 feels like a lot in a poor system like Voynichese. Especially when doing it blindly without noting the underlying patterns.
I'm not a great statistician, so just some general thoughts.
1. Some of the differences you discuss would disappear when somehow normalized for text length. Unique tokens, hapax, reuse... So I wonder if your whole first section could be summarized as "Q20 has many words per page"?
[*]2. I am very interested in ways to kind of smoothen out and "repair" things. If it's always "aiin" but then suddenly "oiin", we may wonder whether the thing that looks like "o" was actually supposed to be one. I also think splitting hapax that are compounds is a valid strategy.
[*]Edit distance 1 is also a good way to account for scribal and transcription errors. However, edit distance 2 and 3 feels like a lot in a poor system like Voynichese. Especially when doing it blindly without noting the underlying patterns.