Editing Final Report/Thesis 2015 (section)

=====2013 Statistical Frequency Analysis Review=====
A critical review of the statistical frequency analysis of the letters from the 2013 group has been conducted to determine possible extensions to be undertaken by the 2015 group.  The 2013 group based their statistical frequency analysis of letters on the translations and transliterations of the ''Universal Declaration of Human Rights''.  This document was chosen since it is translated in over 400 languages.  The 2015 group is to analyse this choice of base document using statistical techniques.  266 languages were analysed, since many of the translations were not text files, but paper scans.  This seems like a reasonable omission due to the time constraints of the project and the common European languages are all in text form.  The analysis included accented letters normalised to their ‘parent’ characters, for example, considering 'ǎ' as 'a'.  The languages were then analysed using a variety of combinations of the ambiguous letters within the code.  The 2013 group’s statistical analysis was then refined to the top 20 closest European languages.  These included more uncommon European languages such as Scots and Vepsian.  The graphs of the results from the 2013 group’s analysis can be seen in Figure 9.  The most likely language of the Somerton Man code and control text was found to be Scots.  This is unlikely since it is not a common European language as it is a Scottish dialect <ref>S. L. Center. (2015). What is Scots? [online]. Available: http://www.scotslanguage.com/What_is_Scots%3F_uid2/What_is_Scots_%3F</ref>.  Due to this, Scots, and other less common European languages will be omitted in the 2015 group’s statistical analysis.  Instead, only the most common European languages will be included in order to further refine the statistical process.  Despite this, a conclusion was made that the most likely language was English since Scots and English shared very similar initial letters.
In order to test this conclusion, the 2013 group used the English translation of the ''Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'' as an English control text.  The first 44 words from the text were used since this is the same number as the number of letters in the Somerton Man code.  The results showed, once again, that Scots was the most likely language, followed by English (see Figure 9).
Analysing this choice of control text, the choice was made by the 2013 group as a matter of convenience.   This may not have been the best decision to make as the ''Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'' was originally written in Persian, and has since been translated into English.  The use of a translated text as the English control may have skewed the statistical results of the analysis of the control text as the translation may use uncommon words or expressions.  Another reason for the suspected use of uncommon words or expressions is the fact that the text is a book made up of four line poems, meaning that it may not accurately represent commonly used words or letters in such a small sample size of 44 words.  The 2015 group is to attempt to counteract this possible skew by using 44 words out of a popular novel, originally written in the most likely language.
[[File:2013_Statistical_Language_Analysis_Graphed_Results.png|thumb|700px|centre|'''Fig. 9:''' 2013 Statistical Language Analysis Graphed Results <ref>L. Griffith and P. Varsos. (2013). Semester B Final Report 2013 – Cipher Cracking [online]. Available: https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/index.php/Semester _B_Final_Report_2013_-_Cipher_cracking</ref>]]