From: Liviu Daia (no email)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 19:18:13 EDT
On 3 September 2002, Greg A. Woods <> wrote:
[...]
> Though Paul Graham's publication was the first discussing this idea
> to come to _my_ full awareness, I'd bet that anyone involved with
> language analysis could have instantly thought of using Bayes' Theorem
> to identify whether some arbitrary spammer was the author of a given
> message or not. This really isn't a new idea (~1960's).
[...]
Actually, the idea goes back to (at least) a XVII-th century monk
called Marin Mersenne, perhaps even much earlier. This guy studied
(among other things) what we'd call today automatic translation, and
cryptography. I strongly suspect he never heard about Bayes, Paul
Graham, or Eric Raymond. :-) Apparently, the converse is also true.
Regards,
Liviu Daia
-- Dr. Liviu Daia e-mail: Institute of Mathematics web page: http://www.imar.ro/~daia of the Romanian Academy PGP key: http://www.imar.ro/~daia/daia.asc - To unsubscribe, send mail to with content (not subject): unsubscribe postfix-users
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