Comments on: Why Dowd’s “talking” explanation makes no sense http://www.wordyard.com/2009/05/21/why-dowds-talking-explanation-makes-no-sense/ Technology, politics, culture Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:30:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Journalism and Net Nativity | dv8-designs http://www.wordyard.com/2009/05/21/why-dowds-talking-explanation-makes-no-sense/comment-page-1/#comment-10572 Journalism and Net Nativity | dv8-designs Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:06:37 +0000 http://www.wordyard.com/?p=1984#comment-10572 [...] In Dave Winer and Jay Rosen’s latest Rebooting the News, Jay points out that debugging, which works so well for software and hardware, has not been part of the culture of BigTime Journalism. (The proximal example involving the Times and Maureen Dowd is summarized well by Scott Rosenberg.) [...] [...] In Dave Winer and Jay Rosen’s latest Rebooting the News, Jay points out that debugging, which works so well for software and hardware, has not been part of the culture of BigTime Journalism. (The proximal example involving the Times and Maureen Dowd is summarized well by Scott Rosenberg.) [...]

]]> By: Journalism and Net Nativity | Blog.Wood http://www.wordyard.com/2009/05/21/why-dowds-talking-explanation-makes-no-sense/comment-page-1/#comment-10437 Journalism and Net Nativity | Blog.Wood Wed, 27 May 2009 22:53:35 +0000 http://www.wordyard.com/?p=1984#comment-10437 [...] In Dave Winer and Jay Rosen’s latest Rebooting the News, Jay points out that debugging, which works so well for software and hardware, has not been part of the culture of BigTime Journalism. (The proximal example involving the Times and Maureen Dowd is summarized well by Scott Rosenberg.) [...] [...] In Dave Winer and Jay Rosen’s latest Rebooting the News, Jay points out that debugging, which works so well for software and hardware, has not been part of the culture of BigTime Journalism. (The proximal example involving the Times and Maureen Dowd is summarized well by Scott Rosenberg.) [...]

]]> By: Doc Searls Weblog · Journalism and Net Nativity http://www.wordyard.com/2009/05/21/why-dowds-talking-explanation-makes-no-sense/comment-page-1/#comment-10428 Doc Searls Weblog · Journalism and Net Nativity Wed, 27 May 2009 16:29:16 +0000 http://www.wordyard.com/?p=1984#comment-10428 [...] In Dave Winer and Jay Rosen’s latest Rebooting the News, Jay points out that debugging, which works so well for software and hardware, has not been part of the culture of BigTime Journalism. (The proximal example involving the Times and Maureen Dowd is summarized well by Scott Rosenberg.) [...] [...] In Dave Winer and Jay Rosen’s latest Rebooting the News, Jay points out that debugging, which works so well for software and hardware, has not been part of the culture of BigTime Journalism. (The proximal example involving the Times and Maureen Dowd is summarized well by Scott Rosenberg.) [...]

]]> By: Scott Rosenberg http://www.wordyard.com/2009/05/21/why-dowds-talking-explanation-makes-no-sense/comment-page-1/#comment-10376 Scott Rosenberg Sun, 24 May 2009 14:08:59 +0000 http://www.wordyard.com/?p=1984#comment-10376 Titus, I'm not a scientist or a mathematician, so I can't speak to the theoretical validity of the 9-word fingerprint. I can say that (a) I've found it to work (with Google) on the universe of documents online, when using non-boilerplate text, and (b) in this case, applying the concept to Dowd also seems to have been valid, since she has now changed her story and admitted that she swiped the words from an email message (see my new post). Whether the math holds, I can't vouch. I can say that most people with years of editorial experience will agree: 40 words of text (with one deliberate change introduced) does not get duplicated verbatim by accident. Titus, I’m not a scientist or a mathematician, so I can’t speak to the theoretical validity of the 9-word fingerprint. I can say that (a) I’ve found it to work (with Google) on the universe of documents online, when using non-boilerplate text, and (b) in this case, applying the concept to Dowd also seems to have been valid, since she has now changed her story and admitted that she swiped the words from an email message (see my new post).

Whether the math holds, I can’t vouch. I can say that most people with years of editorial experience will agree: 40 words of text (with one deliberate change introduced) does not get duplicated verbatim by accident.

]]> By: Titus Brown http://www.wordyard.com/2009/05/21/why-dowds-talking-explanation-makes-no-sense/comment-page-1/#comment-10368 Titus Brown Sun, 24 May 2009 04:45:47 +0000 http://www.wordyard.com/?p=1984#comment-10368 I'm not defending Dowd, but the "unique fingerprint" analysis is almost certainly wrong. In general, N words (9 sounds reasonable) can be used as a fingerprint for randomly generated text -- that is, if your null hypothesis is that two sentence generators are randomly generating their sentences, you can distinguish between the null and plagiarism by looking at common sub-sentences of length 9. However, that's not how humanity actually generates sentences; there are many stereotyped patterns for generating sentences, as well as sharp, specific memory committed to remembering and repeating well-turned phrases (poetry, anyone?) and your portrayal of Dowd's explanation for what happened could fit. (We use the same technique in bioinformatics for comparing genomes, and similar issues arise in a number of places.) --titus I’m not defending Dowd, but the “unique fingerprint” analysis is almost certainly wrong. In general, N words (9 sounds reasonable) can be used as a fingerprint for randomly generated text — that is, if your null hypothesis is that two sentence generators are randomly generating their sentences, you can distinguish between the null and plagiarism by looking at common sub-sentences of length 9. However, that’s not how humanity actually generates sentences; there are many stereotyped patterns for generating sentences, as well as sharp, specific memory committed to remembering and repeating well-turned phrases (poetry, anyone?) and your portrayal of Dowd’s explanation for what happened could fit.

(We use the same technique in bioinformatics for comparing genomes, and similar issues arise in a number of places.)

–titus

]]>