Glory be! The ratio! (OoP)

[Tim Regan <timregan@microsoft.com>]

Hi All,

---  "Davidwrote:
> That gives the following:
> 
> Linear: R2 0.90, B6 1100, B7 1250
> Quadratic: R2 0.99 B6 1400, B7 1900
> Exponential: R2 0.94 B6 1300, B7 1700

What does R2, B6, and B7 stand for? I should know but don't (and am 
not near stats books to check)

> Indeed the best fit quartic predicts 500 pages for book 6 
> and *minus* 1800 for book 7.  

Wow - we have scientific proof that JKR and her lawyers are going to 
remove slash fanfiction from the web. At least 1800 pages of it ;-)

> Why should the books be getting longer?  If we can explain 
> that we might have a basis for prediction.

<straw man>
Each character has a minimum amount of text required to keep them 
moving through the plot. Ditto for each relationship between 
characters. The rate of character additions is far greater than the 
rate of character removals. Hence the books must grow.
</straw man>

Whilst we're all feeding our inner geek, what I'd like to see is a 
pictorial analysis of each of the HP novels using a visualization 
technique like Text Arc http://www.textarc.org/ I predict that where 
low frequency nouns appear repeatedly throughout a text they are 
foreshadowing a plot development in a later book. I could test the 
theory on I, II, and III, and if it's true use IV to predict the 
content of V and above. Even if it didn't work it woud make a great 
Nimbus 200X presentation (X > 3). Now all I need is electronic 
versions of the texts. Ho hum.

Cheers,

Dumbledad.