Edwin B. Newman

Length-frequency statistics for written English*

The results of a tabulation of word frequencies in a sample of written English are analyzed in terms of word length and syntactic function. It is found that a simple stochastic model gives a rough prediction for the results obtained when all words are combined, but not when words are classified as function or content words. Function words are short and their frequency of occurrence is a decreasing function of their length; content words are longer and their probability is relatively independent of length.

The redundancy of texts in three languages

The procedure that predicts the mean information per letter in a long text by adding the constraint measured between pairs of letters in a text has been tested more fully. Results are presented to show that with randomized texts there is a close approximation to the Miller-Madow prediction of sample bias. Three samples of English of varying complexity show slightly more information per single letter and much more information in an average letter for the more difficult material. Conversely, samples from Samoan, English, and Russian show some constancy in the average information per letter in spite of wide differences in size of their alphabets. Thus, greater redundancy is correlated with a larger alphabet.

On the Origin of “Scales of Measurement”

Stevens proposed that measurement in psychology should employ one of four scales, nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio, each characterized by a mathematical operation that defines the group of which the scale is an example. Isomorphic with the mathematical scale, there is an appropriate psychological operation which if employed warrants the use of the corresponding scale. The development of this proposal is traced.

Gabriele Gräfin von Wartensleben and the birth of gestaltpsychologie

Gestaltpsychologie had its birth in the fertile intellectual climate of Frankfurt am Main several years before the official founding of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University at Frankfurt. Among those in the group surrounding Max Wertheimer and applying his ideas each to their own special problems were Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, and Gabriele Grafin von Wartensleben. In addition to being the first woman to receive a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Vienna, Von Wartensleben was the first person to publish a didactic statement of Wertheimers general principles of Gestalttheorie.