Foregone conclusions – the Kruskal count | Hacker News Reader

Foregone conclusions – the Kruskal count

futilitycloset.com

7 pointsstrttn6 comments

The description, which says that you can start at any of the first 12 words, doesn't seem quite right; you can start on any of the first 8 words and it works, which seems amazing (but apparently isn't—I haven't read the linked analysis), but starting at the 9th ('sitting') or the 11th ('her') will leap-frog you right over 'sister'. (I suppose it's debateable whether or not this 'works' starting at the 12th word, depending on whether you count starting there as winding up there.)

You do land on the second 'sister'.

SITTING by her sister on the bank, AND of having NOTHING to do once or twice she HAD peeped into THE book her SISTER.

Oh, thanks! I didn't even notice that there was a second 'sister'.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/903/

Ah, but unlike any other obligatory XKCD you tend to see on HN, the relevance here isn't in the comic but in the alt-text you get when you hover over the image.

While funny, I think that's not the same spirit. In some sense, the XKCD one is observing "if you ask 'why' enough times, then the answer is eventually 'philosophy'"; the fact that these links all lead to 'philosophy' is, in some sense, a (jointly if not singly) intentional human creation, and it has semantic meaning.

The Kruskal count is observing, on the other hand, that 'large' collections of data (even for values of 'large' that are quite small, by statistical measures) inevitably include apparently designed, but actually semantically meaningless, coincidences.

Hmm, let me try again. The fact that all Wikipedia articles eventually lead, by transitive linking, to 'philosophy' means something about philosophy; the fact that all trails from the first 12 words of Alice in Wonderland eventually lead, by letter-counting, to 'sister' means nothing about sisters.

I really should have read the second sentence of your post before looking at the link.

I spent way to much time figuring out how it might be related with TFA.

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