(20-02-2021, 07:59 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Not having a background in statistics, coding, or information science, Donald's methodology went a little over my head. Can anyone explain to a layman how to use his state tables to generate vords? I'm looking to try it out and brainstorm the types of simple, low-tech processes that a medieval person might have used, which would result in a set of state transition probabilities like he outlines. Also, if anyone can link me a good idiot's guide to understanding Markovian state transitions, that would be awesome.
Apologies for not replying sooner, but using the table on You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view., you start at row
start, and generate a random number between 0 and 999. You then proceed through the cells in the row, subtracting the number in them. When you your result is negative, you note the column you're in (which might be
ch1 after subtracting 160. You write the ch glyph and then go the row
ch1 and repeat the process.
The difficult parts are (1) generating the random number, and (2) labelling the columns/rows. One way, with reduced accuracy, would be to use a card deck (52 in a normal deck, 78 in a tarot deck) with a specific order for the cards (e.g. spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs). Each row/column would be indexed by a particular card (e.g.
ch1 might be 8 of diamonds) and the column indices would be in increasing order so the next column might be knave of diamonds or ace of clubs, but not, for example, queen of hearts. So if, after shuffling, you pick the 8 of diamonds, you go to that column, write the glyph there, return the card to the pack, and then go the 8 of diamonds row, and so on. With a bit of practice, each glyph would take a few seconds to pick and write.
But there's a problem with this. It doesn't match one of the statistical properties of the Voynich manuscript, which I show on You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view.. To match it you appear to need a Poisson process, which is typically generated by some time-dependent random process. I think this result is significant and if confirmed should be taken into account by anyone suggesting a solution. But at that point I gave up.
What remains to be done is to correct some of the other things I did wrong: not realizing that the first glyph in a word depends on the last glyph in the previous one, ignoring the special end of line glyphs, etc., and then figure out a practical
Poisson process for choosing the next glyph.
Quote:I'm surprised Donald Fisk's work isn't better known and cited by advocates of the meaningless VMs hypothesis. Just from what I can see with my limited knowledge, he makes at least as strong a case for it as T&S or H&R, if not stronger.
A couple of academics, both of whom have published papers on the Voynich manuscript, have suggested that I publish a paper, which would get my work noticed. I'd like to, if I ever find the time.