Publication
Statistical Infelicities in The New Oxford Shakespeare Authorship Companion
David Auerbach critiques the mathematics in several of the New Oxford Shakespeare methods. ANQ: American Notes and Queries, 33:1, 28 (2019)
What is it about?
Computer algorithms used to analyse textual patterns have been applied to the Shakespeare canon in recent years, 'discovering' co-authors with great fanfare and making headlines in the mainstream news. In 2017 the New Oxford Shakespeare Authorship Companion published the research underlying many of these headline-grabbing attributions. This project, collating the work of a number of independent researchers, demonstrates that most if not all of the methods used in this work are scientifically and mathematically unsound.
Why is it important?
The attribution 'discoveries' of these unscientific methods have quickly gained public acceptance, due to the eminence of those scholars involved, the publisher of the New Oxford Shakespeare (OUP) and the wide dissemination of the findings in the mainstream press. But these discoveries are based on pseudoscientific methods. With the Shakespeare canon now being comprehensively and inaccurately disintegrated, a concerted critique of these methods is vital.
Perspectives
The main contributors to the project are Sir Brian Vickers (Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare studies), Dr Darren Freebury-Jones (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust), David Auerbach (former Google and Microsoft engineer), Pervez Rizvi (mathematician) and myself (Shakespeare scholar, former programmer).
Dr
Ros
Barber
Goldsmiths, University of London
