Hits per 1000 words

[Craig Chapin]

Hello, everyone. I'm puzzled by something, and I thought I'd put this question out for your input.

 

When I search for all words (*) in any set of biblical books in any translation that I've tried thus far and then display details as a table, the figures for "Hits per 1000 words" never seem to reach 1000 as I would expect them to. They are generally between 700 and 800, though some are higher and some are lower. Shouldn't a search for all words in a text produce 1000 hits per 1000 words? This makes me wonder how the hits per thousand words are calculated. Can anyone enlighten me?

 

--Craig

[jpkang]

You won't always have 1000 (or whatever value you set in the Graph Display) words in every slice (e.g., chapter or other division, depending on the x-axis). For example, I ran it against a custom range of Jude in the NRSV, where you only have 620 words total, which is what the y-axis scales to as the maximum for this short range of text. And it steps up, suggesting that it is some kind of cumulative average.

 

So... I take the numbers impressionistically.

[Craig Chapin]

Thanks for helping me with this puzzle.

 

Most biblical books have more than 1000 words, some a good many more. These too never seem to reach 1000 hits per 1000 words when I search for all words. I haven't seen a number above 900. So I'm puzzled. Could verse references count as words?

 

--Craig

 

For reference, here's what I get for "Hits per 1000 words" searching for * in the GNT.

 

830.64 Matthew (18,363 words)

829.28 Mark (11,313 words)

832.27 Luke (19,496 words)

835.27 John (15,675 words)

828.27 Acts (18,471 words)

828.27 Romans (7,114 words)

811.34 1 Corinthians (6,842 words)

824.85 2 Corinthians (4,488 words)

805.85 Galatians (2,233 words)

837.25 Ephesians (2,423 words)

822.91 Philippians (1,631 words)

812.95 Colossians (1,582 words)

839.18 1 Thessalonians (1,482 words)

859.08 2 Thessalonians (823 words)

805.57 1 Timothy (1,591 words)

805.07 2 Timothy (1,239 words)

790.17 Titus (659 words)

831.27 Philemon (335 words)

806.38 Hebrews (4,956 words)

808.62 James (1,745 words)

802.38 1 Peter (1,685 words)

839.57 2 Peter (1,099 words)

835.68 1 John (2,141 words)

841.92 2 John (245 words)

790.61 3 John (219 words)

817.38 Jude (461 words)

840.74 Revelation (9,856 words)

[Helen Brown]

I cannot explain the method, but can point out that the hits is every word you found, but the number of words includes each punctuation mark. So you will only reach 1000 hits if there is no punctuation in the text.

[jpkang]

I cannot explain the method, but can point out that the hits is every word you found, but the number of words includes each punctuation mark. So you will only reach 1000 hits if there is no punctuation in the text.

I know Craig is working with translations, but I believe this separation of punctuation and words does not hold for Hebrew and Greek texts.

[Marco V. Fabbri]

I might add that the Latin VULG-T qualifies for a 100% of hits, as in most books there is no punctuation.

 

Where commas or fullstops are included, as it happens for Pseudepigrapha such as the Prayer of Manasseh and Letter to the Laodiceans, a 100% score is no longer attained.

[Craig Chapin]

Thank you for explaining. That answers my question.

 

I discovered the unexpected result while searching in Greek (GNT-T) and confirmed it in Hebrew (BHS-W4), so it seems to affect those modules as well.

 

--Craig