A One-Page Ledger Method for Generating Voynich-Like Text

[Dunsel]

This is the closest chart I have to a less abrupt transition and you may remember it from my work on <ed>.  It's showing the switch between scribe 1 and <ho> and scribe 2 and <ed>.  And yes, the pages are reordered but, the background is shaded according to Currier A and B.  So there is a gradual change but...

Thanks for the chart.  But suppose that there are two sets of pages: Set A where ed is never used and the frequency of ho varies randomly and uniformly between 0.05 and 0.55, and set B where the frequency if ho varies randomly and uniformly between 0.05 and 0.10, while that of ed varies randomly and uniformly between 0.00 and 0.40.  

If you plot the frequencies with the pages in some random order, but with all A pages first then the B pages, what you will see is just that: two different random distributions.

But if you sort the pages by decreasing frequency of ho or of the ratio ho/ed, the plot would look just like your plot.  You will see a gradual transition from (ho = 0.55, ed = 0.00) to (ho = 0.05, ed = 0.40).  A transition that does not exist in the data, and was created wholly by the sorting.

All the best, --stolfi

That is fair criticism of the visualization itself, and yes, sorting can absolutely create the appearance of continuity between otherwise separate distributions.
But my argument is not based solely on the shape of that chart. The important point is that the <ho> and <ed> regimes also correlate strongly with other manuscript structures:

• Currier A/B,
  
• Davis scribes,
  
• section clustering,
  
• vocabulary ecology,
  
• and source-page behavior in the analyzer.
  

Notice how Currier A is heavy on the left of the chart where <ho> dominates and Currier B is on the right side where <ed> dominates.  That chart is not just measuring <ed> and <ho>.  The same separation keeps reappearing through multiple unrelated measurements. 

So I agree the chart alone cannot prove gradual transition. But I also do not think the broader pattern reduces to a visualization artifact created by sorting.