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The emergence of Zipf's law - Spontaneous encoding optimization by users of a command languageThe distribution of commands issued by experienced users of a computer operating system allowing command customization tends to conform to Zipf's law. This result documents the emergence of a statistical property of natural language as users master an artificial language. Analysis of Zipf's law by Mandelbrot and Cherry shows that its emergence in the computer interaction of experienced users may be interpreted as evidence that these users optimize their encoding of commands. Accordingly, the extent to which users of a command language exhibit Zipf's law can provide a metric of the naturalness and efficiency with which that language is used.
Document ID
19860056646
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Ellis, S. R.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Hitchcock, R. J.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 12, 2013
Publication Date
June 1, 1986
Publication Information
Publication: IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
Volume: SMC-16
ISSN: 0018-9472
Subject Category
Cybernetics
Accession Number
86A41384
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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