He probably assumed the sentence selection to be a statistically independent process, which it is not.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
A professor of mine posited that most every sentence ever spoken or written had never before been communicated. There was some compelling math behind it, and some compelling reason it was mentioned, but I still find it dubious.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 8 hours ago
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
but “most” only needs to be 50% of sentences, and if you include puncutation, tone, context, speed, accent, cadence, pauses, pitch, volume, intent, method/medium, background noise…
bisby@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
“Hello, how are you?” has been repeated plenty. But after that things start to vary.
In the sequence of numbers 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9… Most numbers only appear once even though most numbers are a repeat.
- There are 9 possible numbers and most (88%) of them are not repeats
- "1" accounts for most (60%) of the entries in the sequence.
If we assume “hi, how are you?” is “1” and most sentences are another number, we can see how even with common phrases being repeated frequently, most sentences may tend to be original.
(I’ve not done the math and I’ve definitely not studied language enough to say how dubious or accurate the claim is, you just piqued my interest and I started trying to rationalize it all)
WalleyeWarrior@midwest.social 33 minutes ago
Obviously some template phrases are repeated a lot, but those are not the majority of sentences. Consider talking to someone on the phone for 20 minutes. You have the customary greetings that take maybe 30 seconds along with your farewell in the last 30 seconds, then you have the next 19 minutes of actual conversation where you exchange information. The conversation would not need to last for 20 minutes if you were just repeating the same phrases over and over again.
affenlehrer@feddit.org 5 hours ago
At the same time the infinite monkeys with typewriters are also writing novels about it
TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 8 hours ago
Ok buddy
Prox@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Your professor massively underestimates how much of what I say is movie references.