Reading "study", allegedly from Cambridge. Interesting.

Factual Questions
1

I was forwarded the following in an e-mail today:

Naturally skeptic of anything e-mail, I’m wondering if this really was a study by Cambridge. However, I did find it interesting that as the message states, I really had no problem reading it the first time through.

So, I guess my questions are this: Is this really a subject of study? Are the conclusions drawn in the message itself accurate, or is it something else? Maybe we’re somewhat conditioned to logically see certain words follow others in a paragraph or sentence, and can quickly deduce/descramble what the scrambled word is? Can most folks read that without much trouble?

2

I read it without any troble. Got it on the first try too. This study, if real, is consistent with C. Shannon’s finding that English carries only 1 bit of information per letter – which is to say, very little.

3

Sigh. It’s been posted on the board a few times already in the past few weeks.

Snopes article. They also reference this paper that may answer some of your questions regarding the area of study.

4

Would you believe it, this is only the tenth time this “study” has been mentioned here, in the past two weeks.

5

There was a thread in MPMSIS about it. It even made trhaed sotpintg: tihs is relaly wreid sutff

6

Heh, serves me right for not checking first. No need to tax the hmsaerts, request you close the thread.