Re: Distribution of a vowel on the page
- From: Richard Ulrich <Rich.Ulrich@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:45:23 -0400
On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:07:26 -0700, luca.pamparana@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi everyone,
I have a statistics question. We were doing Poisson distribution in
our class today and the discussion topic is whether the number of
times a vowel occurs on a line follows Poisson distribution or not. I
think that it will not follow Poisson distribution as the probability
of a vowel occurring is more than the probability for a consonant
occurring. However, most people are of the opinion that it should
follow Poisson distribution because regardless of the probability it
should still be distributed randomly.
I did some test and took a page of paper from a normal book and did
some stats on it. I did not get it to look like Poisson distribution.
I am wondering which reasoning here is more reasonable.
In a book in English?
There are two reasons that the number of vowels on a line
will not follow Poisson. First, Poisson describes a relatively
*rare* event when the circumstance is otherwise binomial
(like this). Second, the events would have to be *independent*.
But consonants and vowels are structured by words, and
words seldom start or end with more than 3 (say) consonants
or vowels. What you observe will have almost no instances
of more than 6 -- of *either* consonants or vowels. And
one of those has p > 0.5, so the event should not be enormously
rare.
--
Rich Ulrich, wpilib@xxxxxxxx
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
.
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