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From: willdye@typhoon.unl.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: How often do we type "A"? "Q"?
Message-ID: <willdye.672093601@typhoon>
Date: 19 Apr 91 20:40:01 GMT
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kingsley@hpwrce.HP.COM (Kingsley Morse) writes:

>Has anyone statistically analyzed spoken (or written) language? For 
>example, what is the probability of various english phonemes? What is
>the probabilty of an "A" in English? In French?

Talk to the cryptographers.  They have analyzed various languages
in great detail, because they use patterns in a language to help
them break codes.  For example, if the code was to subsitute
two-digit numbers for letters, you would look for the number
that occurs most often, say 50, and try subsituting e for that
number.  E is the most commonly-used letter in the English 
language, followed by t, a, and o.  More sophisticated analysis
is available.

--willdye