Quote:
Originally Posted by Solon
Can any of you stats folks figure this out?
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=096...3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z
I could only handle the introduction and conclusions.
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Solon, do you have specific questions? I don't do stylometrics in my professional work but I am generally familiar with it. I read this paper once a long time ago and I don't keep up with the developments in the literature. I have little doubt that BYU or FARMS responded to this study, but I am unaware of the response.
If you are looking for a kind of summary of what he finds then look at figure 1. Can you see how the same author samples don't cluster together (for example, look at the Mormon samples)? The often cluster closer to other authors (except for the Joseph Smith writing samples).I think that may be the most important point he makes. There appears to be a fair amount of variation within author (as identified by the Book of Mormon). The within author variation looks at least as big as between author variation. (I think that study uses measures of vocabulary richness as compared to the early BYU stuff that looked at the frequency of non-contextual words). In summary, the original stuff said that Mormon and Nephi don't write the same, and basically this study says that Mormon doesn't write the same Mormon and the difference is as big as the Mormon/Nephi difference.
Implications
I think Mormons should be wary of relying on or turning to stylometric results for support of multiple authorship. At best the empirical evidence in favor of the result isn't robust, and probably should be described as mixed.
Second, I can't for the life of me figure out why even if it is an ancient document one would expect there to be evidence of multiple authorship given what we know of the translation process . Also, I think you can construct reasonable hypotheses where it is a 19th century document and multiple authorship. I just don't see how a sharp hypothesis with regard to multiple authorship can be generated (either direction).