Editing Final Report 2010 (section)

===Pattern Initialism===

The Pattern matching algorithm was utilised in a very similar manner to the Initialism algorithm discussed above.  Patterns that contain two symbols and appear in the mystery code were highlighted and then used as a basis for a wildcard pattern search on the different types of English texts.

====Pattern Selection====

As shown in the following table the letters of the mystery code were spread out in order to single out the patterns that actually occur.   The different pattern combinations can be seen highlighted in yellow and are broken down further in the next table.

As shown, patterns that occur both horizontally and vertically were used for the testing.  It has since been decided that the vertical patterns are unlikely to be of any interest as a simple inspection of the actual mystery code shows very little structure or consistency in a vertical manner compared to the horizontal. 



<center>
{| class="wikitable" border = "1" cellpadding="2" style="text-align"
|+ Apparent patterns in the Somerton Man Code
|-
|bgcolor="yellow"|M
|R
|G
|O
|bgcolor="yellow"|A
|bgcolor="yellow"|B
|bgcolor="yellow"|A
|bgcolor="yellow"|B
|D
|
|
|
|
|-
|bgcolor="yellow"|M
|bgcolor="yellow"|T
|B
|I
|M
|P
|bgcolor="yellow"|A
|N
|E
|bgcolor="yellow"|T
|P
|
|
|-
|bgcolor="yellow"|M
|bgcolor="yellow"|L
|I
|A
|B
|O
|bgcolor="yellow"|A
|bgcolor="yellow"|I
|bgcolor="yellow"|A
|bgcolor="yellow"|Q
|C
|
|
|-
|bgcolor="yellow"|I
|bgcolor="yellow"|T
|bgcolor="yellow"|T
|bgcolor="yellow"|M
|bgcolor="yellow"|T
|S
|bgcolor="yellow"|A
|M
|S
|bgcolor="yellow"|T
|G
|A
|B
|}
</center>

The highlighted letters are all, in some form, part of a two symbol pattern of length 3 or 4. As shown below, patterns occurring both forwards (left to right) and backwards (right to left) were used for the testing.  This assumes that there is a possibility that the code was written backwards.

From these patterns the individual wildcard code is derived, giving the patterns of interest that were used on the different English texts.  For example where ABAB occurs in the mystery code, a pattern of @#@# was searched to reveal any combination of letters that match the ‘pattern’ of ABAB.

A full breakdown of the patterns of interest and their associated combination can be seen in the following table.



<center>
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|+ Interesting Pattern Symbol Breakdown
|-
! scope="col" | Interesting 4 Symbol Sequences
! scope="col" | Interesting 3 Symbol Sequences
|-
! scope="col" colspan = "2"| Horizontal
|-
| ABAB - @#@# || ABA - @#@ 
|-
| TTMT - @@#@ || AIA - @#@ 
|-
| TMTT - @#@@ || ITT  - @##
|-
| || TTI - @@#
|-
| || TTM - @@#
|-
| || MTT - @##
|-
| || TMT - @#@
|-
| || BAB - @#@
|-
! scope="col" colspan = "2"| Vertical
|-
| MMMI - @@@# || TLT - @#@
|-
| IMMM - @### || MMM - @@@
|-
| AAAA - @@@@ || AAA = @@@
|-
|  || TQT - @#@
|-
|  || MMI - @@#
|-
|  || IMM - @##
|-
! scope="col" colspan = "2"| Patterns of Interest
|-
| @#@# || @#@
|-
| @@#@ || @##
|-
| @#@@ || @@#
|-
| @@@# || @@@
|-
| @### || 
|-
| @@@@ || 
|-
|}
</center>



Each of the pattern combinations found in the mystery code was then used to search through different types of text so that any differences between the initial letters used in the different text types would be clear.  The result of these tests would then hopefully suggest the most likely origin of the mystery code if it is in fact initialism.


The types of texts used were:
*Poems (a variety of long and short poems from a large variety of poets/archives)
*Novels 
*Science texts (a selection of textbooks - chemistry, maths and physics)
*Shakespeare (entire collection)
*The Bible (separately tested the King James and Revised Standard Versions)
*Rubaiyat (book of poems associated with the murder itself)

====Discussion====
The results, for each pattern possibility, have been tabulated and can be found in the appendix. A few example results tables are shown below.  The highlighted cells depict the patterns that are an exact match to the pattern sourced from the mystery code.


[[Image:Patternpic1.JPG|center]]


[[Image:Patternpic2.JPG|center]]


[[Image:Patternpic3.JPG|center]]


The first thing that is apparent from the results is the similarities between the different types of text.  This suggests that the general occurrence of the order of initial letters in English is independent of the source.  That is, it does not really matter where the raw text is from as it is all English and will produce very similar results.


The second interesting point is the highlighted results that relate to the letters taken directly from the mystery code.  Having these results occur in the top list of results implies that it is still technically possible that the code is in fact an initialism without substitution. However, apart from the patterns of one letter (@@@@ and @@@), there is a very large spread of results with the top result usually only about 5% of the total amount of matches found.  The top 26 matches are shown for each search however in the full list some patterns returned results with up to 500 different match variations.  This suggests that it is highly likely that if the mystery code is in fact initialism, there is a good chance that it is also using some type of substitution method.  That is, each letter is actually representing a different letter.


The very low amounts of matches found that are a direct link from the book of Rubaiyat and the mystery code is also important.  This book, linked so closely to the murder, would be the most obvious source of the code.  It is clear from the results that if the code has been made as an initialism from the Rubaiyat then it is definitely also incorporating substitution.