Cracking the Voynich code 2014 weekly progress

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Weekly progress and questions

This is where you record your progress and ask questions. Make sure you update this every week. The deadline is every Friday evening. However, if you sometimes slip a little into the weekend (so long as you don't do it too often) we won't be too hard on your marks.

Please remember that we make use of this progress section to give you your project mark. Your mark will suffer if you don't complete this section.

Briefly record (i) progress, (ii) problems/questions, (iii) goals for following week.

Semester 1 Week 1

Bryce

  1. Week 1 progress:
    • Group meeting with supervisors (Derek, Maryam) and project partner (Peter)
    • Started reading and discussing background information on Voynich Manuscript
    • Attended literature training session with Kay Leverett (Friday, 9am)
  2. Goals for Week 2:
    • Begin article searching and research into the Voynich Manuscript
    • Start on Project Proposal preparation

Peter

  1. Week 1 progress:
    • First group meeting with supervisors
    • Started reading articles about current progress made towards a translation
    • Found and discussed the merits of some of the available ascii representations of the manuscript
    • Attended literature search training with Kay Leverett
  2. Goals for Week 2:
    • Start on project proposal preparation
    • Write some basic scripts to help with formatting and searching the ascii files
    • Continue researching the Voynich Manuscript and the attempts that have been made to decode it


Semester 1 Week 2

Bryce

  1. Week 2 progress:
    • Attended the Risk Assessment and Management lecture (Thursday)
    • Met with Peter and discussed plans and content for the proposal seminar:
      • Organised times for which to do the presentation
      • Looked at previous years proposal presentations
    • Found previous comparisons on word frequency/occurrence and plots people have done on the Voynich Manuscript
  2. Goals for Week 3:
    • Have a draft of the proposal presentation ready for Monday
    • Finalise and practice

Peter

  1. Week 2 progress:
    • Attended Risk Management Lecture
    • Met with Bryce and discussed proposal seminar
    • Continued research on past VMS decoding work
  2. Goals for Week 3:
    • Complete Proposal Seminar Draft Slides by Monday
    • Discuss Draft Slides with Supervisor
    • Finalise and practice seminar


Semester 1 Week 3

Bryce

  1. Week 3 progress:
    • Discussion of project proposal with supervisor and team (Tuesday)
    • Added comparison table, video and WRI slides
    • Edit and finalise presentation
    • Presented at proposal seminar (Friday 4:35pm)
  2. Goals for Week 4:
    • Investigate alternate plans and suggestions
    • Further research
    • Continue as per the Gantt chart and WBS

Peter

  1. Week 3 progress:
    • Discussed Proposal Seminar Draft with Supervisor (Tuesday)
    • Added SVM, MDA, HMM theoretical slides to presentation
    • Completed and edited presentation slides and notes
    • Proposal Seminar (Friday 4:35pm)
  2. Goals for Week 4:
    • Discuss and refine project planning
    • Continue with phase 1 of project plan


Semester 1 Week 4

Bryce

  1. Week 4 progress:
    • Management aspects of project
    • Unfortunately nothing substantial as of Friday
    • Meeting on Sunday with team
  2. Goals for Week 5:
    • Supervisor and team meeting for progress report and analysis
    • Continue as per the Gantt and WBS

Peter

  1. Week 4 progress:
    • Prototype scripting with voytools and matlab/octave
    • Organised Team Dropbox to better suit project work
  2. Goals for Week 5:
    • Meet with team and supervisor
      • Update and finalise gantt chart/WBS
      • Discuss cloud storage options for code
      • Discuss current code work
    • Continue with phase 1 as per gantt chart


Semester 1 Week 5

Bryce

  1. Week 5 progress:
    • Had meeting with supervisor and team on Tuesday
      • Possible modification of analysis technique to better suit
      • Reduced scope of analysis to Takahashi only
    • Approval for purchase of resources
      • Sent to Danny (Storeman) for purchase
    • Tested new scripts in MATLAB for arranging data
  2. Goals for Week 6:
    • Finish sorting EVT file into something workable
      • Produce some outputs/comparisons
    • Informal meeting for progress update

Peter

  1. Week 5 progress:
    • Had meeting with supervisor and team (Tuesday)
  2. Goals for Week 6:
    • Finish sorting EVT file into something workable
      • Produce some outputs/comparisons
    • Informal meeting for progress update


Semester 1 Week 6

Bryce

  1. Week 6 progress:
    • Chased up order (1) with Danny
    • N/A
  2. Goals for Week 6b:
    • Progress update e-mail
    • Complete week six (6) goals this Sunday
    • Team meeting
      • Should note that this weekend is UofA MMW2, services affected

Peter

  1. Week 6 progress:
    • Experimented with matlab and python solutions to Phase 1
  2. Goals for Week 6b (Holidays)
    • Complete Phase 1


Semester 1 Break

Bryce

  1. Semester Break progress:
    • Searchable format complete, requires manual verification
  2. Goals for Week 6b:
    • Begin progress report

Peter

  1. Semester Break progress:
    • Further scripting work
  2. Goals for Week 7:
    • Finish Phase 1
    • Team meeting

Semester 1 Week 7

Bryce

  1. Week 7 progress:
    • Had team meeting to discuss progress (Wednesday)
    • Edited progress report wiki
    • Matlab script edited and simple tests verified
  2. Goals for Week 8:
    • Meeting with Supervisors
    • Continue with scripting and ranking of occurrences

Peter

  1. Week 7 progress:
    • Team Meeting
    • Further scripting work
      • Words per page
      • Most common words
  2. Goals for Week 8:
    • Meet with supervisors
    • Finish Phase 1

Semester 1 Week 8

Bryce

  1. Week 8 progress:
    • Team meeting with supervisors Derek and Maryam (Wednesday)
    • Extra ideas and different methods are being introduced
    • Matlab script added, ranking comparisons
  2. Goals for Week 9:
    • Clean up Matlab script, streamline. Implement into 6 sections
    • Begin WRI analysis

Peter

  1. Week 8 progress:
    • Team Meeting with supervisors
    • Gathered statistics about ngrams present in the VMS
    • Uploaded meeting minutes
  2. Goals for Week 9:
    • Begin Phase 2: identify unique words based on VMS Images
    • Investigate methods for normalising VMS statistics discussed in the meeting

Semester 1 Week 9

Bryce

  1. Week 9 progress:
    • Ongoing modifications to Matlab script
    • No other significant progress this week
  2. Goals for Week 10:
    • Complete WRI comparisons and other suggested ideas from meeting
    • Finish simplifying Matlab script
    • Continue with progress report update

Peter

  1. Week 9 progress:
    • Researched different metadata types available in EVT file
    • Recorded 3-4 word descriptions for all VMS images
  2. Goals for Week 10:
    • Identify unique words on pages with certain image types
    • Begin progress report

Semester 1 Week 10

Bryce

  1. Week 10 progress:
    • Planned progress report items
    • Major simplifications to code almost complete
  2. Goals for Week 11:
    • Continue simplifying Matlab script
    • Continue with progress report
    • Fix coding issues with word detections

Peter

  1. Week 10 progress:
    • Modularised Existing Code
  2. Goals for Week 11:
    • Write test cases for existing code
    • Develop method for testing the UNDHR
    • Write python script to split VMS into sections


Semester 1 Week 11

Bryce

  1. Week 11 progress:
    • Word detection fixed, tested and accurate within EVA file
    • WRI code written, issues need fixing
  2. Goals for Week 12:
    • Revise current coding attempts and print graphs
    • Continue with progress report
    • Group meeting and project discussion

Peter

  1. Week 11 progress:
    • Wrote python script to split VMS into sections based on certain qualifiers
    • Wrote python script to sort by Zandbergen illustration and find unique words
    • Tested unique word cases for various sections
  2. Goals for Week 12:
    • Write further test cases
    • Develop method for testing the UNDHR
    • Compile progress report


Semester 1 Week 12

Bryce

  1. Week 12 progress:
    • Modified coding scripts for some statistics
    • Added test functions and checking
    • Plots added to progress report and sections added and edited
    • Discussion of project progress with supervisors and team (Wednesday)
  2. Goals for Week 13:
    • Begin editing code into functions
    • Read more into the books ordered

Peter

  1. Week 12 progress:
    • Wrote test cases for the UNDHR and for various other English texts
    • Tested current scripts and compiled results
    • Wrote and formatted progress report wiki
  2. Goals for Week 13:
    • Expand on Phase 2 (Picture Identification) as explained in the progress report
    • Read "An elegant enigma"


Semester 1 Week 13

Bryce

  1. Week 13 progress:
    • Week been dedicated to exam revision
    • Discussed ideas and project direction
  2. Goals for Week 14 (SWOTVAC):
    • Finish editing code into functions
    • Begin on testing subsets of manuscript including WRI expansion

Peter

  1. Week 13 progress:
    • Read about half of "An elegant enigma"
    • NOTE: Most of week dedicated to study for other subjects
  2. Goals for Week 14 (SWOTVAC):
    • Finish NSA Study
    • Expand on Phase 2 (Picture Identification) as explained in the progress report


Semester 1 Week 14 (SWOTVAC)

Bryce

  1. Week 14 progress:
    • Finished reading 'An Elegant Enigma'
    • Continued as per usual
  2. Goals for Semester Break:
    • Look at other similar texts to use for comparison purposes and to reduce text size for future tests

Peter

  1. Week 14 progress:
    • Finished reading "An Elegant Enigma"
    • Developed code for sectioning out a certain subset of pages easily
  2. Goals for Semester Break:
    • Try to get some Voynich work done while in Chile

Semester 2 Week 1

Bryce

  1. Week 1 progress:
    • Transcribed a herbal text dating back to the mid 1500s for comparison, medieval Gothic
    • Started writing methods for foreign text determinations
    • Researched and read methods of literature comparisons plus findings
  2. Goals for Week 2:
    • Have a group meeting with Peter discuss methods and ideas and progress
    • Fix word finding algorithm for faster run time and accuracy

Peter

  1. Week 1 progress:
    • Designed an algorithm for testing picture descriptors
    • Read Zanbergen and Stolfi's previous work on the manuscript grammar and word entropy
    • Group meeting with Bryce
  2. Goals for Week 2:
    • Continue reading Stolfi's thoughts on grammar and language comparisons
    • Test word diversity code on other standard-length texts

Semester 2 Week 2

Bryce

  1. Week 2 progress:
    • Fixed word finding abilities within code for accuracy
    • Implemented several statistical methods mentioned earlier, basic statistics
    • Reduced statistical comparisons to only Herbal A and Herbal B languages
    • Group meeting and project discussion with Peter
  2. Goals for Week 3:
    • Modularise code fragments and test cases for robustness and accuracy
    • Begin testing sample texts and outputs and write up results

Peter

  1. Week 2 progress:
    • Read about possible coarse and fine grammar structures for the VMS
    • Tested word diversity and alphabet length for a number of languages, including the 1500s herbal text
  2. Goals for Week 3:
    • Rewrite code for Unicode language support
    • Look at basic Voynich grammar indicators

Semester 2 Week 3

Bryce

  1. Week 3 progress:
    • Completed algorithm simplification for faster and easier output comparisons
    • Tested scripts using 2 extra sample data sets both transcribed texts
    • Started WRI in conjunction with SVM foundations for data testing in next phase
  2. Goals for Week 4:
    • Finish off WRI modifications, begin SVM algorithm and classification method
    • Supervisor meeting with project partner Peter for discussion and updates
    • Complete write up for foreign text determinations

Peter

  1. Week 3 progress:
    • Rewrote code to support Russian, Hebrew, Hungarian, and Chinese
  2. Goals for Week 4:
    • Fix Chinese punctuation errors
    • Meet with Bryce

Semester 2 Week 4

Bryce

  1. Week 4 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 5:

Peter

  1. Week 4 progress:
    • Researched algorithms for fuzzy string matching (edit-distance)
    • Wrote code to look at which words are most likely to be "alternate spellings" based on edit distance and heuristics
    • Group meeting with Bryce
  2. Goals for Week 5:
    • Meet with supervisors
    • Basic Voynich grammar indicators
    • Improve heuristics by testing "mispelling" code against old-english texts

Semester 2 Week 5

*Current week*


Bryce

  1. Week 5 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 6:

Peter

  1. Week 5 progress:
    • Read Zanbergen tests on language clouds
    • Started designing new experiments
    • Wrote proximity letter search script to identify ngrams
    • Wrote script to identify word position probability for each EVA character
  2. Goals for Week 6:
    • Extend grammar identification scripts
    • Develop experiments based on Zandbergen notes
    • Extend testing of grammar scripts to other languages.

Semester 2 Week 6

Bryce

  1. Week 6 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 7:

Peter

  1. Week 6 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 7:

Semester 2 Week 7

Bryce

  1. Week 7 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 8:

Peter

  1. Week 7 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 8:

Semester 2 Week 8

Bryce

  1. Week 8 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 8a:

Peter

  1. Week 8 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 8a:

Semester 2 Week 8a (Semester Break Wk 1)

Bryce

  1. Week 8a progress:
  2. Goals for Week 8b:

Peter

  1. Week 8a progress:
  2. Goals for Week 8b:

Semester 2 Week 8b (Semester Break Wk 2)

Bryce

  1. Week 8b progress:
  2. Goals for Week 9:

Peter

  1. Week 8b progress:
  2. Goals for Week 9:

Semester 2 Week 9

Bryce

  1. Week 9 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 10:

Peter

  1. Week 9 progress:
  2. Goals for Week 10:

Semester 2 Week 10

Bryce

  1. Week 10 progress:


Peter

  1. Week 10 progress:


END OF PROJECT

See also


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