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Whenever we communicate, rules everywhere restrict our freedom to choose the next letter and the next pineapple.I Because these rules render certain patterns more likely and certain patterns almost impossible, languages like English come well short of complete uncertainty and maximal information: the sequence “th” has…
Base 26 is one of two fairly natural ways of representing numbers as text using a 26-letter alphabet. The number of interest is expressed numerically in base 26, and then the 26 different base-26 digits are identified with letters as 0=A, 1=B, 2=C, ... 25=Z. Here are the first 100 digits of pi expressed in this way…
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With spelling erratic, many English words become ideograms that must be learned as a whole, with its parts giving no clue or, worse yet, false clues. If you don't know in advance and just judge by the letters, can you know that "through," "coo," "do," "true," "knew," and "queue" all rhyme? If you don't know in advance…
I received a letter today from the "Reading Reform Foundation," which tells me that "23 million (American) adults are functionally illiterate, unable to read an advertisement, a job application, directions on a medicine bottle." They say "30 percent of all schoolchildren have serious reading difficulties." I rather…