Posted by MH on September 22, 19103 at 12:03:10:
> This is interesting,,,,,,,,Aoccdrnig to rscheeaech at Cmabrigde
> Uinervtisy,it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the
> olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be ar the rghit
> pclac.The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit
> porbelb.Tihs ia bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervry lteter by
> istlef,but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?? Hvae a graet weke
> evreynoe!!!
This IS very interesting. I had received this in an email just recently and was quite impressed on the readability of the passage even with the misspellings.
A good read on the legitimacy of this email can be found at:
http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/cambridge.asp
Note: The preceding website is an excellent reference for any emails you wish to validate for legitimacy. For those who didn't understand what I just said: If you get an email which states something is true, check out this website first BEFORE forwarding to everyone in your address book.
As for MY thoughts on the subject, I would be interested to see how this passage was selected and if it contains words which can be more readily "perceived" as correct than others in our language (a tainted sample, per se).
If you notice, the majority of the text is comprised of words which consist of 5 or fewer letters (78%). By further examination, you will see that 64% of the text has FEWER than 5 letters, and by following the "rules" of the text (1st and last letter must be correct), you can deduce that 1, 2 and 3 letter words MUST remain correct (these comprise 44% of the text, in case you were wondering). The incorrect permutations of the remaining majority of the text is very small (only 1 for four letter words and 2 for five letter words) from which you can conclude that these words can easily be deciphered. If you re-read the passage and note the points at which you "stall", you will recognize that the majority of the time this will occur on those words which consist of MORE than 5 letters. Also, you can quickly identify the first word in the passage (According) due to its placement in the text, Cambridge University due to the capitalization of proper nouns and the word letter or letters as it is used three times within this passage.
The human mind is very impressive in its ability to sense what really isn't there. A good example of this is the perceived phantom center in a stereo recording. You only have sound produced from two points, yet we "hear" a field of sound operating between those two points.
Finally, I would like to see what would happen if someone tested this "slydexic" logic by applying it to their next job application. :)
"Most successes come from the attention to details."
PS I'm not a teacher nor am I an engineer.