Mon - May 25, 2009
Name Chains: Yet Another Fine Waste of Time
Hardly anything is a complete waste of
time, but you're welcome to judge this diversion for yourself.
With no excuses for my long silence here, I now
attempt to resuscitate this blog.
I've lately been linking names together by matching the last name of one person and the first name of another, to form chains. Here's an example:
I've lately been linking names together by matching the last name of one person and the first name of another, to form chains. Here's an example:
Pearl Buck Henry James Joyce
Kilmer
Each pair of consecutive names identifies a well-known person: Pearl Buck, Buck Henry, Henry James, James Joyce and Joyce Kilmer.
A chain could be continued indefinitely, but in this case "Kilmer" looks like a dead end (except for the scientist Kilmer McCully, but "McCully" seems even more likely to be a dead end). Maybe if we picked a different last name for "James" or "Joyce" we could continue much further. For example, the Irish novelist Joyce Cary might be a good choice. (Of course, one could use anyone's name, or even make up a name, but it seems more sporting to use names that can be readily verified as real.)
The left end is a little easier to extend, if we don't mind a few names that are less well known:
Herbert Samuel Daniel Pearl Buck
Henry James Joyce Kilmer McCully
Some of the names may be unfamiliar; these can all be found at Wikipedia.
Here's another chain:
Elton John Emory Upton Sinclair Lewis
Thomas Cole Porter Goss
"Goss" may be a dead end, but if we trim a few names off, we can make the following name loop:
Upside down at the bottom we now have the name Lewis
Elton, a prominent British physicist. While his name may not be very familiar,
it joins this loop nicely. Making such loops is a special challenge (though a
few names such as "Sirhan Sirhan" can form loops all by themselves). Getting
names arranged in a circle is a lot of bother (at least with the tools I've
found), so I'll generally write them in a simple line of text with the same name
at both ends (and it hardly matters where you break
them):
Upton Sinclair Lewis Elton John Emory
Upton
I'm not especially interested in setting rigid rules for constructing name chains and loops. I'd rather encourage people to play with the idea and create any variations they find interesting. Please let me know if you have some fun with it, or want to suggest some interesting or promising names to work with. I've got some further ideas myself that I may explore in subsequent entries.
Posted at 12:06 PM Read More
Thu - October 18, 2007
Gadget Giveaway Gimmick
An intriguing and cost-conscious approach
to the offering of inducements
To start trying to ease back into the blogging
habit, I'll start with a brief item.
A few weeks ago, my junk email included a message from a software company, inviting me to a "technical seminar" (i.e., an all-day sales pitch). Apparently I'm not alone in my lack of enthusiasm for such events, because the organizers decided to tempt potential attendees with the possibility of a significant tangible reward. This is hardly a new idea, but their giveaway had an interesting twist. The invitation included the following paragraph:
And don't forget that we'll be giving away an iPhone from among attendees at each location. You could be our lucky winner!
Or, apparently, you could be their unlucky loser! So if you already have an iPhone, leave it at home.
The company's website and a subsequent email about the seminar lacked the "from among attendees" language. Perhaps this is because the wording was an unfortunate mistake. An alternative hypothesis is that the "from among" language was included in a limited-distribution email, sent only to those selected as the potentially most lucrative customers -- to forewarn them, while not tipping off all the potential donors.
A few weeks ago, my junk email included a message from a software company, inviting me to a "technical seminar" (i.e., an all-day sales pitch). Apparently I'm not alone in my lack of enthusiasm for such events, because the organizers decided to tempt potential attendees with the possibility of a significant tangible reward. This is hardly a new idea, but their giveaway had an interesting twist. The invitation included the following paragraph:
And don't forget that we'll be giving away an iPhone from among attendees at each location. You could be our lucky winner!
Or, apparently, you could be their unlucky loser! So if you already have an iPhone, leave it at home.
The company's website and a subsequent email about the seminar lacked the "from among attendees" language. Perhaps this is because the wording was an unfortunate mistake. An alternative hypothesis is that the "from among" language was included in a limited-distribution email, sent only to those selected as the potentially most lucrative customers -- to forewarn them, while not tipping off all the potential donors.
Posted at 12:18 PM Read More
Mon - April 2, 2007
More Weird Word Work
Seeking words with relatively few
distinct letters
In contrast to my post about words with lots of LOJO
(Letters Occurring Just Once), this item is about words that have (for their
length) very few different letters. An example that will be familiar to regular
readers is
alfalfa,
which has a total of 7 letters, but only 3 distinct letters:
a, l
and
f.
Now, it seemed to me not very interesting to simply count the number of distinct letters in various words. If you do that, any three-letter word would score as low as alfalfa---or lower. Instead, I compute what I call the Distinct Letter Index (DLI), which is the ratio of distinct letters to total letters. So the word alfalfa has a DLI of 3/7, or about 0.43. On the other hand, a typical three letter word such as box has a DLI of 3/3, or 1.
Using a Ruby script to compute DLI scores for my lists of English words, I collected the lowest scoring words. Many of these are relatively short words with repeated syllables such as booboo and muumuu (with DLIs of 0.333). The somewhat unlikely word senselessnesses has a very low DLI of about 0.267, and there are many other low-scoring words that end with -lessnesses.
Very long words tend to show up, because they generally have many repeated letters, and the classic pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis has a quite low score of 0.311(as does its plural, which differs only in having an e in the penultimate position).
The word kinnikinnik has a very low score of 0.273, and it has several variant spellings with somewhat higher scores. The word can refer either to certain smoking mixtures used by Native Americans, or to a plant also known as bearberry, which has a fairly low score of 0.5.
Finally, one of my all-time favorite words, humuhumunukunukuapuaa (the recently-reinstated state fish of Hawaii) is among the 40 lowest-scoring words I've found, at 0.333.
Now, it seemed to me not very interesting to simply count the number of distinct letters in various words. If you do that, any three-letter word would score as low as alfalfa---or lower. Instead, I compute what I call the Distinct Letter Index (DLI), which is the ratio of distinct letters to total letters. So the word alfalfa has a DLI of 3/7, or about 0.43. On the other hand, a typical three letter word such as box has a DLI of 3/3, or 1.
Using a Ruby script to compute DLI scores for my lists of English words, I collected the lowest scoring words. Many of these are relatively short words with repeated syllables such as booboo and muumuu (with DLIs of 0.333). The somewhat unlikely word senselessnesses has a very low DLI of about 0.267, and there are many other low-scoring words that end with -lessnesses.
Very long words tend to show up, because they generally have many repeated letters, and the classic pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis has a quite low score of 0.311(as does its plural, which differs only in having an e in the penultimate position).
The word kinnikinnik has a very low score of 0.273, and it has several variant spellings with somewhat higher scores. The word can refer either to certain smoking mixtures used by Native Americans, or to a plant also known as bearberry, which has a fairly low score of 0.5.
Finally, one of my all-time favorite words, humuhumunukunukuapuaa (the recently-reinstated state fish of Hawaii) is among the 40 lowest-scoring words I've found, at 0.333.
Posted at 08:51 PM Read More
Wed - March 21, 2007
The Most Uncopyrightable Dermatoglyphics in all of Swashbucklerdom
Seeking out words with lots of unrepeated
letters...
Some weeks ago, in response to my post about words
with interesting spellings, Miranda posted a couple of comments
about counting non-repeating letters. This got me thinking about
writing small programs to scan lists of English words, to locate words having
especially many or few repeated letters, and I've now got some early results to
share.
First, a few comments on how I went about this. I decided that this might be a good time to start exploring a relatively new programming language, known as Ruby, that has been getting a lot of attention lately as a useful scripting language, especially for web development. Free Ruby implementations are readily available, but I use a Mac at home, and Ruby is packaged with Mac OS X, so I didn't even have to download it. So far, I'm pretty impressed with the language; it seems quite sensibly designed. But I'm not going to delve into it here.
Besides the programming language, I also wanted one or more fairly comprehensive lists of English words. Such lists are not hard to find, because they are useful for applications such as spelling checkers. Several web sites offer lists in simple formats, with a range of properties (such as whether they use American or British spellings, whether they include inflected forms, proper nouns or acronyms, and how comprehensive they are). For spelling checkers, you may not want to include too many rare cases, because they can cause unintended spellings to slip through. But for my purposes, I mostly just wanted lots of words. I eventually settled on a combination of lists from SCOWL Revision 6 that amounts to over 400,000 words, but excludes proper nouns and acronyms.
For today, I'm going to focus on words with large numbers of non-repeated letters, or LOJOs (Letters Occurring Just Once). The highest LOJO score I found was 15, for the words uncopyrightable and the rather more obscure dermatoglyphics (the study of skin patterns--such as fingerprints--on hands and feet), both having no repeated letters at all.
I found 16 words with 14 LOJOs. Only ambidextrously seemed to me to be a word you might actually encounter in everyday life, though a few others such as pseudocharitably, pseudomythical, troublemakings and undiscoverably are readily understood. Some of the others are technical terms such as benzhydroxamic, dermatoglyphic (of course), hydropneumatic and ventriculography. The longest is superacknowledgement, in which both e and n are repeated. The one I found initially most puzzling was sulphogermanic, for which I lacked even a plausible use (except maybe to describe a fire-and-brimstone preacher from Stuttgart?) until I guessed that it is probably a term for certain chemical compounds containing both sulphur and germanium.
There are more than 90 words with 13 LOJOs, ranging from commonplace (unpredictably) through the unlikely (swashbucklerdom) to the obscure (lepidothamnus, a genus of small conifers).
Words with very low LOJO counts (for their length) will be a topic for another day.
First, a few comments on how I went about this. I decided that this might be a good time to start exploring a relatively new programming language, known as Ruby, that has been getting a lot of attention lately as a useful scripting language, especially for web development. Free Ruby implementations are readily available, but I use a Mac at home, and Ruby is packaged with Mac OS X, so I didn't even have to download it. So far, I'm pretty impressed with the language; it seems quite sensibly designed. But I'm not going to delve into it here.
Besides the programming language, I also wanted one or more fairly comprehensive lists of English words. Such lists are not hard to find, because they are useful for applications such as spelling checkers. Several web sites offer lists in simple formats, with a range of properties (such as whether they use American or British spellings, whether they include inflected forms, proper nouns or acronyms, and how comprehensive they are). For spelling checkers, you may not want to include too many rare cases, because they can cause unintended spellings to slip through. But for my purposes, I mostly just wanted lots of words. I eventually settled on a combination of lists from SCOWL Revision 6 that amounts to over 400,000 words, but excludes proper nouns and acronyms.
For today, I'm going to focus on words with large numbers of non-repeated letters, or LOJOs (Letters Occurring Just Once). The highest LOJO score I found was 15, for the words uncopyrightable and the rather more obscure dermatoglyphics (the study of skin patterns--such as fingerprints--on hands and feet), both having no repeated letters at all.
I found 16 words with 14 LOJOs. Only ambidextrously seemed to me to be a word you might actually encounter in everyday life, though a few others such as pseudocharitably, pseudomythical, troublemakings and undiscoverably are readily understood. Some of the others are technical terms such as benzhydroxamic, dermatoglyphic (of course), hydropneumatic and ventriculography. The longest is superacknowledgement, in which both e and n are repeated. The one I found initially most puzzling was sulphogermanic, for which I lacked even a plausible use (except maybe to describe a fire-and-brimstone preacher from Stuttgart?) until I guessed that it is probably a term for certain chemical compounds containing both sulphur and germanium.
There are more than 90 words with 13 LOJOs, ranging from commonplace (unpredictably) through the unlikely (swashbucklerdom) to the obscure (lepidothamnus, a genus of small conifers).
Words with very low LOJO counts (for their length) will be a topic for another day.
Posted at 04:47 AM Read More
Fri - February 16, 2007
More Fun with Spelling
What do the words alfalfa, monotonous and
headache have in common?
In the first
Willowwood blog entry, I explained that the reason I chose
"Willowwood" as the blog name was mainly that I'm fond of the word, because it's
fun to spell out loud.
Janice recently reminded me of several other such words that we discovered many years ago when I was helping her prepare to compete in spelling bees (at which she did quite well, winning the school-district championship twice, as I recall). All these words involve some sort of rhythm, rhyme or repetition, but each has its own special charm.
The simplest example is "alfalfa". The repetition here is obvious even in print, but it seems more interesting with stress added and the sounds of the letter names flowing together, so "eh-el-ef-eh-el-ef-eh" becomes more like "EH-el-uh-FAY-el-uh-FAY" or even "AIL-uh-FAIL-uh-FAY". I have to be careful to avoid extra repetitions: "AIL-uh-FAIL-uh-FAIL-uh-FAIL-uh-FAY".
In the word "monotonous", the repeating letter "o" yields a rhythm that can be, well, monotonous, especially if the speaker exaggerates the effect: "EM-oh-EN-oh-TEE-oh-EN-oh-you-ess".
One of our favorite spelling words is "headache", where the repetition is not so obvious in the printed word. As with "alfalfa", much of the effect comes from the way the letter names flow together, so "aitch-ee" sounds much like "eh-chee". We tended to stress the repeating "eh" sounds: "EH-chee-EH-dee-EH-see-EH-chee".
If you think it might help, you can listen to me spelling these words. Of course, in an actual spelling bee, it would be inadvisable to spell quickly, or slur the letter names, but when you're practicing several hundred words in a session, it's good to have some fun when you can!
Janice recently reminded me of several other such words that we discovered many years ago when I was helping her prepare to compete in spelling bees (at which she did quite well, winning the school-district championship twice, as I recall). All these words involve some sort of rhythm, rhyme or repetition, but each has its own special charm.
The simplest example is "alfalfa". The repetition here is obvious even in print, but it seems more interesting with stress added and the sounds of the letter names flowing together, so "eh-el-ef-eh-el-ef-eh" becomes more like "EH-el-uh-FAY-el-uh-FAY" or even "AIL-uh-FAIL-uh-FAY". I have to be careful to avoid extra repetitions: "AIL-uh-FAIL-uh-FAIL-uh-FAIL-uh-FAY".
In the word "monotonous", the repeating letter "o" yields a rhythm that can be, well, monotonous, especially if the speaker exaggerates the effect: "EM-oh-EN-oh-TEE-oh-EN-oh-you-ess".
One of our favorite spelling words is "headache", where the repetition is not so obvious in the printed word. As with "alfalfa", much of the effect comes from the way the letter names flow together, so "aitch-ee" sounds much like "eh-chee". We tended to stress the repeating "eh" sounds: "EH-chee-EH-dee-EH-see-EH-chee".
If you think it might help, you can listen to me spelling these words. Of course, in an actual spelling bee, it would be inadvisable to spell quickly, or slur the letter names, but when you're practicing several hundred words in a session, it's good to have some fun when you can!
Posted at 10:21 AM Read More
Sun - February 4, 2007
Facing Insurmountable Opportunities
Jim likes the phrase "insurmountable
opportunities", and he finds more than enough ways to use it.
I don't know where or when I first came across the
phrase "insurmountable opportunities". Quotations such as "We are confronted
with insurmountable opportunities" are often attributed to Walt Kelly in his
comic strip
Pogo,
and it seems like the kind of wit that Kelly was known for, but I've seen claims
that no such statement can be found in the archives of
Pogo.
Though its origins are clouded, I've come to appreciate the phrase in the last few years. It sounds like an oxymoron, as opportunities are like open doors, quite the opposite of the kind of obstacles that are usually described as insurmountable. Still, we may be fortunate enough to be able to choose paths from a whole set of opportunities, and it's these choices--rather than the opportunities themselves--that can be real obstacles.
Sometimes the difficulty is simply that there are many more opportunities than you can possibly take advantage of. There are more books than you can hope to read, more music than you can ever listen to, more recipes than you can try, more destinations than you can visit--and more examples than you'd want read here. As communications technologies advance, many of us are lucky enough to have access to huge arrays of alternatives to choose from in certain domains. How can we make the most favorable choices?
Complexity can also make choices difficult. When you're trying to choose among complex products--such as mobile phone plans, or plans for Medicare Part D--the options available may be both complex and differently structured, so that comparisons are difficult. Uncertainty imposes another difficulty. How many phone calls will you make each month? What prescription drugs will you need during the next year? Which books will you enjoy most?
So the choices can be difficult, and it's often quite impossible to be sure of making the optimal choice. In that sense, opportunities can be insurmountable. But it may possible to make choices that are good enough. Viewed this way, the phrase "insurmountable opportunities" isn't an oxymoron, it's just hyperbole.
Opportunities are good things, though ever-increasing numbers of opportunities yield diminishing improvements, and can cause difficulties and frustrations. In this complex world, I seem to find more and more situations where the "insurmountable opportunities" description seems appropriate, if overstated.
Though its origins are clouded, I've come to appreciate the phrase in the last few years. It sounds like an oxymoron, as opportunities are like open doors, quite the opposite of the kind of obstacles that are usually described as insurmountable. Still, we may be fortunate enough to be able to choose paths from a whole set of opportunities, and it's these choices--rather than the opportunities themselves--that can be real obstacles.
Sometimes the difficulty is simply that there are many more opportunities than you can possibly take advantage of. There are more books than you can hope to read, more music than you can ever listen to, more recipes than you can try, more destinations than you can visit--and more examples than you'd want read here. As communications technologies advance, many of us are lucky enough to have access to huge arrays of alternatives to choose from in certain domains. How can we make the most favorable choices?
Complexity can also make choices difficult. When you're trying to choose among complex products--such as mobile phone plans, or plans for Medicare Part D--the options available may be both complex and differently structured, so that comparisons are difficult. Uncertainty imposes another difficulty. How many phone calls will you make each month? What prescription drugs will you need during the next year? Which books will you enjoy most?
So the choices can be difficult, and it's often quite impossible to be sure of making the optimal choice. In that sense, opportunities can be insurmountable. But it may possible to make choices that are good enough. Viewed this way, the phrase "insurmountable opportunities" isn't an oxymoron, it's just hyperbole.
Opportunities are good things, though ever-increasing numbers of opportunities yield diminishing improvements, and can cause difficulties and frustrations. In this complex world, I seem to find more and more situations where the "insurmountable opportunities" description seems appropriate, if overstated.
Posted at 08:23 PM Read More
Tue - January 9, 2007
Logophilic Podcasts--for Word Geeks
If you're a logophile (word lover) you
might like these podcasts.
If you're interested in words and etymology, you're
a logophile--or a word geek, word nerd, word freak, word wonk, or word lover.
Take your pick--though they're not exactly synonymous. For now, I like word
geek.
It's only in recent months that I've been exploring podcasts, so I haven't really tried a huge number, but one of my current favorites is On Words with John Ciardi from National Public Radio (also available through the iTunes Store). Each episode is about a 5 to 10 minute discussion of one or more words or phrases. Ciardi (pronounced CHAR-dee, more or less) provides interesting background and comments on usage, history and origins--all infused with great wit. It looks like NPR makes a few dozen of these fine episodes available, but unfortunately Ciardi stopped recording podcasts after he died in 1986.
The good news is that Ciardi has a worthy successor who has produced over 400 podcasts, and is still turning them out nearly every weekday. Charles Hodgson's Podictionary podcasts average about three minutes duration, but he also offers weekly compilations if you'd rather grab longer pieces. All of his past episodes are available both through his web site and through the iTunes Store.
Another podcast about words and language is The Word Nerds, which is put together by a small team led by the brothers Dave and Howard Shepherd. I've only listened to one episode so far, but it sounded promising. The format is quite different from the podcasts described above. The episodes run about half an hour or more, with somewhat broader themes, typically hosted by two people engaged in a chattier presentation, with musical interludes as a bonus.
It's only in recent months that I've been exploring podcasts, so I haven't really tried a huge number, but one of my current favorites is On Words with John Ciardi from National Public Radio (also available through the iTunes Store). Each episode is about a 5 to 10 minute discussion of one or more words or phrases. Ciardi (pronounced CHAR-dee, more or less) provides interesting background and comments on usage, history and origins--all infused with great wit. It looks like NPR makes a few dozen of these fine episodes available, but unfortunately Ciardi stopped recording podcasts after he died in 1986.
The good news is that Ciardi has a worthy successor who has produced over 400 podcasts, and is still turning them out nearly every weekday. Charles Hodgson's Podictionary podcasts average about three minutes duration, but he also offers weekly compilations if you'd rather grab longer pieces. All of his past episodes are available both through his web site and through the iTunes Store.
Another podcast about words and language is The Word Nerds, which is put together by a small team led by the brothers Dave and Howard Shepherd. I've only listened to one episode so far, but it sounded promising. The format is quite different from the podcasts described above. The episodes run about half an hour or more, with somewhat broader themes, typically hosted by two people engaged in a chattier presentation, with musical interludes as a bonus.
Posted at 06:03 PM Read More
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Published On: May 25, 2009 12:19 PM
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Published On: May 25, 2009 12:19 PM