Random Noise - quite different questions?

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

-----Original Message-----
From: ECOLING at aol.com <ECOLING at aol.com>
To: Indo-European at xkl.com <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Date: Friday, September 03, 1999 3:29 AM
Subject: Random Noise - quite different questions?

>I confess that I do not entirely understand the reasoning used
>by John McLaughlin in his message on this subject today.
>That is not an oblique criticism, it simply means only what
>it says.  I would appreciate if the logic and assumptions were
>laid out in greater detail.  I promise not to be offended if some
>of it seems exceedingly elementary.

>I do attempt one interpretation below, based on the
>clues I have, to make sense of it for myself.
>But it involves an assumption about Multilateral Comparison
>which I do not share.

>Because of the following phrasing:

>>In other words, we have SIX times as much random
>>noise by doubling the number of languages involved in the comparison.

>I fear that we are discussing quite different questions.
>If Random Noise is expressed as a percentage of the data 
>available, then it does not increase when there are more languages,
>it is by definition constant, at whatever percentage was specified.  
>So John's reasoning would seem
>to require some way of getting results which is not based on
>proportions but is based on absolute quantity of noise?

[snip]
>Best wishes,
>Lloyd Anderson

[Ed]

I'm equally intrigued: I would rather expect the amount of spurious results to
decrease as the number of languages involved increases, since the number of
chance resemblances, false potential cognates etc. (which I would call noise,
i.e. meaningless 'results' of the comparison) common to all or a significant
number of the languages involved decreases.  It is simply a matter of the
number of intersecting sets, mathematically speaking. Or was something else
intended?

Ed