From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Thu Jan 16 2003 - 22:34:30 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
> Or, perhaps more to the point, insights from homeoboxen. Evolution can make
> a complex segmented animal by starting with a simple one and stuttering a
> bit; arguably a lot of the complexity is spandrelized by the new
> morphological constraints...Damien Broderick
Spandrelized? Is that one of those scanner errors? {8^D
In scanning a document, one of the most common
errors is introduced when the scanner interprets
the letters "rn" as "m." The eye does the same
thing as the scanner, so it is difficult
for a proofreader to find these errors.
Most of the time the spell checker identifies
such errors, such as "retume" and "fingemail," but
what about those cases where rn scans to m and forms
a new word that will be passed over by the spell
checker? It would be easy to do a search for any
such words, assuming we know what they are.
I have thought of the following seven:
burn --> bum
stern --> stem
thorn --> thom
corner --> comer
turns --> tums
torn --> tom
garner --> gamer
Are there others?
I wonder if we can set up a scanner to do trial
replacements for rn words, then substitute words
that look very similar to see if the resulting
sentence makes more sense. For instance, can
we teach the computer that if it sees the phrase
"around the comer" it should be "around the corner."
This is kinda what the mind does, I suppose.
spike
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