mostly research stuff
from an anonymous author: “I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg! The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.”
…but this study at “cambridge university” smells funky…so i did a little more digging and found this other commentary, “There never was such a study at Cambridge University, nor at any other university. The head of the Cognitive Sciences department at Cambridge has reported that he knows of no such work ever having been done at Cambridge. An earlier version of this “astounding” item simply credited “an English University” but it seems that someone along the way wanted to make it appear more credible, so situated the fictitious research at Cambridge.”
…and going off the deep end, “It is true that a Ph.D. candidate at Nottingham University, Graham Rawlinson, did write a thesis (unpublished) in 1976 which alleged that people are able to decipher words and read fairly accurately when the middle letters of words (longer than three-letter words) are jumbled a bit. Rawlinson’s conclusions were not nearly as bold as the conclusion indicated in the post (that “it doesn’t matter what order the letters are in as long as the first and last are in the right place,” or that “the human mind reads words as a whole”). Rawlinson tried to have his thesis published, but it was turned down everywhere he submitted it and he does admit that his dissertation was done rather hurriedly.”
the moral of this story? evreybdoy is flul of siht.
this blog is mostly safe for work, though i sometimes throw around a 'fuck' or two. you'll find a bunch of my articles from CI Magazine, SCIP online, other research pieces and some other crap. enjoy. there's lost of content here related to getting information about, around, from and through people and organizations...
Threadwatch.org
February 28th, 2005 at 11:37 am
Search, Spelling and the Long Tail
A post at passing notes, threadlinked above, brings up the somewhat famous, and apparently, quite mythical Cambridge University study that showed, that provided the first and last letters of a word were correct, people can read it jus