“As a rule not knowing is a step towards new knowledge.” – Laila (Sophie’s World)

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Kruskal's Count

In every sufficiently large amount of text, this phenomenon called Kruskal's count occurs. Try it in every paragraph you see; no matter which word you start with, you will almost always (99.9%) end up with the same word. For example,

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are."


Step 1: Select any word from any of the first ten words and count the number of letters in that word.

Step 2: Count that many words forward through the passage to land on a new word.

(For example, if you chose "star", you will land on "what".)

Step 3: Count the number of letters in the new word and move forward that many words.

Step 4: Repeat Steps 1 through 3 until there are not enough words to complete the last word count.

Step 5: Write down the last word on which you land. No matter which word you use to start the steps, you will always land on the same word. (In this case, the word is "you”).

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