From: Kuiper, James D. (kuiper@mayo.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 26 1996 - 16:46:25 EDT
> Using the superficial method
> of searching end punctuation would have to have a rather high standard devi-
> ation, I think. BTW, I believe that the magic number in stats is 30, which in
> this situation probably means that you have to evaluate at least 30 comparable
> authors to determine what the average length would be, and perhaps 30 separ-
> ate works by one author to determine his/her average length (this is a point
> about which I am very ignorant, and hope that someone who knows statistics
> well can-or already has-given us clarification and reason to believe that
> such a task is mathematically possible, given so little data to work with).
>
> Don Wilkins
> UC Riverside
>
Sorry, Don. Thirty is important in very limited contexts. Refer to #1 in
my previous post.
Is there hope for an answer? Can we tell if a sentence in chs 8-10 is longer
or shorter than the average? Yes. In fact, there are ways to test almost
anything an investigator is interested in. But, once again, let me stress the
importance of using a trained statistician. First, only a trained and
experienced statistician knows these wonderful and magic methods of getting
answers to your questions. Second, these methods have rules associated with
them. These rules, called assumptions, must not be violated or the answers
are not valid. Plus your computer output will burn up at midnight.
By the way, you make an excellent point about sentences being connected
together and the problem this poses.
James Kuiper
Rochester, Minn
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