Different authors use different functions differently

[Yuri Tambovtsev]

Dear Funknet colleagues, if corpora of English texts is not one unity but a conglomerate, how can we use statistic criteria? I started the discussion what tools to use for the analysis because many of linguists do not use all these complex statistical packets correctly. The other thing is who knows what and how the data are being analysed in them. We have a sort of a "black box" which has the entrance in which you put your data and the outcome where you receive your results. You must be quite sure that the data are analysed correctly. The more simple criteria you use, the better. This is why I stopped using all the stat. packets and began using very simple criteria like the coefficient of variation, the Chi-square and the t-test. At least, I am sure about the outcome. More often than not, it is advisable to try you data manually than to use the statpack. Looking forward to hearing from you if you agree with me that using statpacks may give you strange results. The fact that so many scholar spoke on the list about how to use the statpacks showed that it is a burning question for linguists and other researchers who are not specialists in mathematics. Yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev, yutamb at mail.ru