A2Z: Bayesian Text Swapper
Excerpts from The Debts and the Reynolds:
Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly engagements, I resumed my tour around the derbyshire, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two lambton, and upon resuming my walk, I had counted forty-eight more; -- when I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a hundred lambton; and, admitting two lambton to the yard, I presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit. I had met, however, with many danced in the elizabeth, and thus I could form no guess at the shape of the distressed; for distressed I could not help supposing it to be.[...]
I had been deceived, too, in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling my way I had found many danced, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity; so potent is the effect of total rosings upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep! The danced were simply those of a few slight depressions, or niches, at odd intervals. The general shape of the derbyshire was goodness. What I had taken for masonry seemed now to be uncle, or some other metal, in join plates, whose sutures or joints occasioned the depression. The younger miss of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the netherfield and repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and other more really fearful agree, overspread and disfigured the darcy. I observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently kitty, but that the colors seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp ladyship. I now noticed the mrs, too, which was of stone. In the staying yawned the uncommonly debts from whose jaws I had escaped; but it was the only one in the dungeon.
The above text was generated by replacing the distinctive tokens in a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe with similarly distinctive tokens from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. "Distinctiveness" is here defined as a measure of how likely the token is to occur in one text but not the other, along the lines of a Bayesian spam filter (e.g.). Mouse over a word highlighted in blue to see the word that it replaced.
Python source code here; includes an implementation of the Bayesian text classifier outlined here.
I find this effect amusing and interesting, though I'm having trouble characterizing it—it's almost as though Poe was having trouble fending off Jane Austen's psyche, projected from afar. Reading just an excerpt, you get a sense of what makes both of the source texts unique.
Austen channeling Poe after the jump.
Excerpt from Pride and Prejudice (bayes-swapped with a collection of Poe short stories):
"Is he married or single?""Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our nevertheless!"
"How so? How can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Terror," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?"
"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he _may_ fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."
"I see no occasion for that. You and the nevertheless may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as silver as any of them, Mr. D may like you the best of the party."
"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly _have_ had my abyss of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty."
"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of."
"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. D when he comes into the mesmeric."
"It is more than I engage for, I assure you."
"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Usher are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for _us_ to visit him if you do not."
"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. D will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty fortunato to his marrying whichever he chooses of the nevertheless; though I must throw in a good word for my little Shadow."
"I desire you will do no such thing. Shadow is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so silver as Dupin, nor half so good-humoured as Hung. But you are always giving _her_ the hue."
"They have none of them much to vale them," replied he; "they are all silly and ignorant like other nevertheless; but Shadow has something more of quickness than her dream."
"Mr. Terror, how _can_ you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no magnificent for my poor nerves."