Briefs

December 20, 2003: Bookish Math - Statistical tests are unraveling knotty literary mysteries. By Erica Klarreich. Science News (Vol. 164, No. 25).

"Stylometry ['the science of measuring literary style'] is now entering a golden era. In the past 15 years, researchers have developed an arsenal of mathematical tools, from statistical tests to artificial intelligence techniques, for use in determining authorship. ... For decades, computers have supported the work of experts in stylometry. Now, computers are becoming experts in their own right, as some researchers apply artificial intelligence techniques to the question of authorship. ... In 1993, Robert Matthews of Aston University in England and Thomas Merriam, an independent Shakespearean scholar in England, created a neural network that could distinguish between the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporary Christopher Marlowe. A neural network is a computer architecture modeled on the human brain, consisting of nodes connected to each other by links of differing strengths. ...

A couple of years later, Holmes and Richard Forsyth of the University of Luton in England used the Federalist Papers to test another artificial intelligence technique. They applied genetic algorithms, which use Darwinian principles of natural selection. The idea is to create a set of rules for determining authorship and then let the most useful, or fit, rules survive. ... Yet another analysis of the Federalist Papers was presented at a computer science conference in October. Glenn Fung of Siemens Medical Solutions in Malvern, Pa., used one of artificial intelligence's newest tools, a pattern-recognition technique called support-vector machines."

http://www.sciencenews.org/20031220/bob8.asp