An Analysis of Letter Dynamics in the English Alphabet
This provides a statistical tool for categorizing English texts, which is useful for applications in cryptography, keyboard design, and linguistics, though it appears incremental.
The researchers analyzed letter frequency distributions across different categories of English writings (news articles, novels, plays, scientific publications) and developed a distance metric to algorithmically recognize writing categories. Their results can be applied to information transmission, data curation, and linguistics.
The frequency with which the letters of the English alphabet appear in writings has been applied to the field of cryptography, the development of keyboard mechanics, and the study of linguistics. We expanded on the statistical analysis of the English alphabet by examining the average frequency which each letter appears in different categories of writings. We evaluated news articles, novels, plays, scientific publications and calculated the frequency of each letter of the alphabet, the information density of each letter, and the overall letter distribution. Furthermore, we developed a metric known as distance, d that can be used to algorithmically recognize different categories of writings. The results of our study can be applied to information transmission, large data curation, and linguistics.