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closeDebate between Drs Montemurro and Rugg
Posted by wkg4 on 05 Nov 2013 at 20:11 GMT
I only recently learned of the Voynich manuscript and I am - as are many others - quite fascinated by it. I also learned that Dr Rugg claims he can reproduce a text that looks similar to the Voynich manuscript by applying a simple selection method to a list of Voynichese 'syllables' thus creating 'hoax Voynichese'. It might have have been interesting if Drs Montemurro and Rugg had collaborated to answer the following question. Can the method that has been applied by Dr Montemurro et al. distinguish the Voynichese in the actual manuscript from the Voynichese created by Dr Rugg? I am sure such a comparison would have given much fodder for further debate.
RE: Debate between Drs Montemurro and Rugg
mmontemu replied to wkg4 on 06 Nov 2013 at 11:18 GMT
As authors of the paper we strongly agree that it would be valuable to test any proposed model of the Voynich text against the different layers of statistical organisation present in it. The Voynich text shows numerous quantitative features consistent with real texts from the level of word frequencies up to interrelationships spanning the whole book; thus, any possible model of the text necessarily needs to address upfront these empirical facts.
We would be happy to apply our analysis to a text sample produced with the table and grille method.
Marcelo Montemurro and Damian Zanette