On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Cantor wrote:
> Does anybody know where I can find program on the website which [can]
> compare two texts/articles and settle whether or not they are similar
> assuming any significant level.
Sorry, Cantor: this is not possible, in general.
One can discover whether two (or more) things _differ_ (on some
quantitative measure) at a specified significance level (when this is a
reasonable thing to do -- it isn't always reasonable), but the formal
definition of "significant" in statistical analysis does not permit
discovering whether two (or more) things are _similar_.
However, it may suffice for your purposes to discover that two things
are not different enough that you can tell them apart (which is not the
same thing as discovering that they are the same), on whatever measure
(or set of measures) you choose to analyze. Whether this be a useful
outcome or not depends heavily on how much information you have (that
is, on the size of the sample available) on the things being compared.
In any case, the hard part is defining the characteristics, or
properties, or measures, on which the two texts/articles are to be
compared.
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Donald F. Burrill [EMAIL PROTECTED]
184 Nashua Road, Bedford, NH 03110 603-471-7128
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