Yup. More Proof Idiocracy Was a Documentary

Well, you got that right. I still won't use a touch screen. Besides, why make a million pixel display if half of it is going to be covered up by your hand? I think the same guys who invented it are working on a contact lens display device with touch screen functionality, so everyone can walk around poking themselves in the eye.

It doesn't adapt to words and phrases you use every day?

My phone actually auto-suggested the phrase "slapped your wife" for me once when the Dayton bashing was at its peak and I typed his name in the screen. And it also prompts for the most commonly used smilies that I just type in like jayzus and brood.

They used to be so much worse. I had a Sony Xperia four years ago when I got to Japan (since they were about two years ahead of us in getting touchscreens that weren't iPhones out) and boy was that thing bugged completely the fuck out. I wasn't even sad when the company I was with fucked me and I couldn't get another contract for two more years, and I was actually looking at getting a regular old flip phone when I returned. Then I got a Note II and never looked back.

I've never used autocorrect on any device.

I wanna type what I wanna type, not what the computer "suggests".

Sounds like more proof that we need to scrap the public education system.

Indeed.

Boston, for example, has not achieved a literacy rate as high as it did when Protestant churches controlled their free public education.

It's Flesh-Kincaid, see the link to theoriginal publication. That's what that test is for.

Where do you think I got the quote

from? According to them, that's what Flesh-Kincaid is measuring.

What the fuck are you talking about?

No, sorry, that's the second report's summary of how it's measuring complexity of syntax and vocabulary.

Wikipedia disagrees with you.

Assuming they used the "Grade Level test" (since the article mentions "Grade Level") then this:


is the formula they used. Notice that there's no mention of things like "syntax" or "vocabulary."

For the "Reading Ease" test, the formula looks like:



Again, no mention of things like "syntax" or "vocabulary." Even the Gunning fog index makes no reference to such things.

Not saying that what you're suggesting is a less accurate method, only that it isn't what was used in the course of this particular study.

Wow, Muad hasn't even been dead a day and you dishonor him with Math in the Red Room.

And I thought the Sokar memorial thread was outta line.































....

Wikipedia does not disagree with me.

You're right to say that FK isn't a particularly good test, but that doesn't change that they're trying to measure syntax as words/sentence, and vocabulary as syllables/word. All your criticism is quite accurate; it has often been brought up as criticism of their test. But as you correctly quote, they think they're measuring "reading ease", and they're not looking at any semantic or pragmatic dimension to do so; in fact, many of the typical implementations are about "translating" the same information from a text difficult to read into one that is easy to read.

Which, again, is not something we should use as a standard for political speeches. "Of all the ways he could have said this same thing, he chose the one that required the highest possible level of education to understand what he was saying."

It's Flesch-Kincaid, btw.

[oldfella] I thought it was Flesh For Fantasy! [/oldfella]

Que? "Obscurity of vocabulary" is not something which can be measured by syllable count alone. I can pull out any number of words which have a low syllable count, but aren't commonly used. Indeed, my profession, machining, is littered with them.

I realize that German is somewhat unique in that it lets you create new words by invading other words and smooshing them all together, but English doesn't work that way. The US Constitution clocks in at a 17.8 on the FK scale, the Declaration of Independence is a 15.1 on that scale. neither of those documents use particularly obscure words, both of them score higher than the average Presidential speech, and both of them are required subjects of study for high school students in the US. (I had to memorize the pre-amble of the Constitution when I was in 7th grade.)

Oh, and if folks bother reading the link in that last post of mine, they'll see that MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech comes in higher than most recent (i.e. since the '70s) Presidential speeches. And for the sake of argument, let's say that everyone who's wanted to vote, has been able to do so since 1970. Why do the grade levels for Presidential speeches in the years since that time continue to fall? Shouldn't they have stabilized at that point, if they weren't going to rise?

I look askance at such tests because most would show that Hemingway was a worse writer than Jim Theis, who wrote the timeless fantasy classic The Eye of Argon, the worst thing written in the English language, or any language. It's not how complex your sentences are, it's how stupid they are. Left, right, or center, we all know this.

I agree. FK don't (except for the "alone" bit, which is kind of a tangent).

That's not how statistics work, and you know it. You have twenty words; ten have one syllable each, the other ten have eight syllables each. Which list contains more words that beginning readers are more likely to have trouble with, assuming either list has been chosen randomly among words usage of equal length?

Very far off on a tangent now, but readability depends on the pragmatics of a genre. If your professional texts are littered with these words, then they are by definition not obscure to typical readers. Otherwise you have a genre that is not generally understood by its typical readers, which is both rare and comes full circle to prove the same point.

Look, consider this the other way around. You're using the results to discuss informative, nuanced speech as opposed to vapid soundbites. In your opinion, how does syllable count prove nuance? How is length of sentence (note: not length of message, but sentences per messages of equal word length) proof of amount of information?

Yup. FK doesn't make any sense for German; it makes little enough sense for English.

Language changes, and speeches that are a century or two old are going to be harder to understand -- simply because they're different from what we're used to. That doesn't mean modern language is "dumber."

Very misleading, as education was not universal in that era, and the vast majority of immigrants were English speaking. Today. something like 30% of Bostonians are non-native speakers.

Long story short: Krieg is dumb.

Case in point, dick sucker.

How is it a tangent?

It depends upon what those eight syllable words are. And if someone's a "beginning reader" in 7th grade, they're going to be barely able to read.

Yes and no. Folks often throw in specialized words when they're not needed, and studies have shown that even in professional publications, the increased use of jargon reduces comprehension by readers.

In and of themselves, neither of them do, but I'm not the one making the claim that the test measures things besides that, you are.

Still not seeing how you can determine "obscure vocabulary" based on syllable counts.

Tucker, IMHO, is correct. You don't have to use contractual legalese - which no one can understand - to be able write and orate an intelligent speech. When my older child was 2, 3, 4, I had to dumb down my speech when teaching him why he can or can't do something. As he got older, my words, again, adjusted with his age and understanding. When giving a speech to adults, a good orator will use words and word patterns appropriate to adults, not 7th graders.

Also ..., gturner .., didn't you use to post in TNZ?

Because nobody has so far claimed that the statistical test used in the OP study was, rather than statistically interesting, a definite and unerringly accurate classification for each text or word. It was understood, I'm pretty sure, that any such numerical approach could at best be true in general, rather than sufficient to ascertain a correct classification on its own.

It really doesn't, because we're talking about statistical probability and not claiming that there aren't ten outliers, but in this case, I'd be hard pressed to come up with even those outliers. Ten octosyllables that are covered by the most basic reading comprehension: Can you?

Definitely. Are you claiming that said jargon is limited to short words?

Indeed I am; I am claiming that the test is (quite badly) designed to measure only other things, and not those you're claiming it measures.

Again, it's not a good tool, but it sort of works for most texts most of the time, because high syllable count and obscurity do in general correlate for words actually in common use, the massive amounts of examples to the contrary notwithstanding.

Yes, but I was banned years ago until I agreed not to attack Obama. Haven't missed it a bit.

Regarding language shifts, Twain and Hemingway were perhaps important in shortening up and simplifying earlier sentence structures. It's easier not to use an endless stream of clauses marked with"thereto", "heretofore", and "moreover".

Not worse or better; simpler or more complex. There are lots of writers who manage to tell a good story without resorting to big fancy words with lots of syllables.