2009/09/14 by M. V. Simkin · 2 voices · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #physics.data-an #physics.soc-ph #stat.AP
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09296174.2012.754602
published as Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, volume 20, issue 1, pp 68-73, 2013
arxiv published 2009/09/14 · arxiv created 2013/02/04 · arxiv updated 2013/02/05
I report the results of the test, where the takers had to tell the prose of Charles Dickens from that of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who is considered by many to be the worst writer in history of letters. The average score is about 50%, which is on the level of random guessing. This suggests that the quality of Dickens' prose is the same as of that of Bulwer-Lytton.