On 19-Jan-09 18:38, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still 
>> wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of 
>> thousands of words, roughly.
> 
> Probably.
> 
> An easier measure is "how many different words show up in a large 
> newspaper over the course of a year". The answer there, I've heard, is 
> around 8000-10000 words.

That will give you the number of words an IQ of 90 is supposed to have. 
So it may give a lower bound your actual number could be a much higher.

> 
> Counting words in a dictionary seems the wrong way to go.
>

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> Sometimes I hear a piece of music that I haven't heard in a long time but 
> had it e.g. on a cassette tape once. I still know every tick and speck of 
> noise and what it faded into. When hearing a new arrangement of a familiar 
> song I usually get it after a few lines and then remember often what line 
> comes next. So for hundreds if not thousands of songs I both remember the 
> instrumentation and errors, implying that I have at least a 'fourier 
> transform' recorded and I have also stored the meaning, which is IIRC in a 
> totally different place in the brain. Oh and I also do remember the video 
> clip when hearing just the song.

I also seem to remember exactly which song *should* come after every song, 
if I were listening to it on whatever old cassette/mix CD I originally had.

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> I did do an experiment where I picked a random page from the dictionary 
> and read the first word off it. It took a *loooong* time before I came 
> across a word I didn't already clearly recognise.

Many dictionaries miss out a lot of words to make them more compact though, 
eg the Oxford English Dictionary has 301k main entries, but more "normal" 
ones you buy in shops contain way fewer (like only 100k).  Given that I 
guess they chop out the 200k least used words, I guess there will be many 
more that you don't know.

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Bill Pragnell wrote:

> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!

Oh, but it is, it is. You may remember pieces of this film, but no doubt 
you could not recall every frame in exacting detail for the entire 
length of the feature.

Hence it is in fact lossy. Though you my correlate some of the dialog of 
the film with the film, and may be able to recall associated dialog, 
it's guaranteed not to be exactly the same as it was. The information is 
there, it's encoded, and it's indexed. And depending on how "important" 
it was to you determines the depth of the compression.

I did not recognise the quote Andrew posted as being from Flight of the 
Navigator, until you posted your response. Obviously that first part 
wasn't in the index.

The further in the past you go, or the less you use the information, the 
more compressed it gets. Thank goodness our computers don't forget 
things like we do.

(Unless the hard drive crashes ... )

-- 
~Mike

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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
> 
>> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
> 
> Oh, but it is, it is. You may remember pieces of this film, but no doubt 
> you could not recall every frame in exacting detail for the entire 
> length of the feature.

What brand of trainers was the kid in Flight of the Navigator wearing?

No Googling! :-P

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Invisible wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>> Bill Pragnell wrote:
>>
>>> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
>>
>> Oh, but it is, it is. You may remember pieces of this film, but no 
>> doubt you could not recall every frame in exacting detail for the 
>> entire length of the feature.
> 
> What brand of trainers was the kid in Flight of the Navigator wearing?
> 
> No Googling! :-P

Uhhh, sorry, lost in compression. Try again. :D

-- 
~Mike

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And lo On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:20:35 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

>>> - What counts as a "word"? (Are different inflextions counted as  
>>> "different" words? Are propper nouns included? How about  
>>> "hexachlorophine"? Is that a word?)
>>  No, but according to Wikipedia Hexachlorophene is.
>
> LOL! The other night I asked my mum to think up words that rhyme with  
> "gleam". Hexachlorophene wasn't even on her list! ;-)

Pfft of course not that doesn't rhyme with gleam.

beam, cream, deem, dream, esteem, extreme, ream, regime, scream, seam,  
seem, steam, supreme, team, theme; and no doubt others.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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>> LOL! The other night I asked my mum to think up words that rhyme with 
>> "gleam". Hexachlorophene wasn't even on her list! ;-)
> 
> Pfft of course not that doesn't rhyme with gleam.

Quoting the Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band:

   Lipstick gleam,
   Hexachlorophene,
   Kling kling-aling,
   Klang klang she sang.

It totally rhymes! :-D

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And lo On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:08:51 -0000, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>  
did spake thusly:

> Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still  
>>> wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of  
>>> thousands of words, roughly.
>>  Probably.
>>  An easier measure is "how many different words show up in a large  
>> newspaper over the course of a year". The answer there, I've heard, is  
>> around 8000-10000 words.
>>  Counting words in a dictionary seems the wrong way to go.
>
> I did do an experiment where I picked a random page from the dictionary  
> and read the first word off it. It took a *loooong* time before I came  
> across a word I didn't already clearly recognise.

And perhaps that's a good way of measuring vocabulary, or relative  
vocabulary at least - give a disparately educated group a book written for  
a particular age bracket and ask them to make a note of each word they  
didn't understand. That would eliminate the climb, climbs, climbing count  
and distinguish the unpossible from the igneous.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
> 
>> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
> 
> Oh, but it is, it is. You may remember pieces of this film, but no doubt 
> you could not recall every frame in exacting detail for the entire 
> length of the feature.

Well, of course. I was just being facetious really, lossy in the sense 
that I haven't lost it in the sense that I've still got it!

> Hence it is in fact lossy. Though you my correlate some of the dialog of 
> the film with the film, and may be able to recall associated dialog, 
> it's guaranteed not to be exactly the same as it was.

How true - unless the wording is particularly distinctive, I'm always 
getting the sense of the quote rather than the actual script. Although I 
partly blame this on misinformed individuals propagating incorrect 
quotes...

> (Unless the hard drive crashes ... )

Yes, I hope you get that fixed without too much hassle.

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