via Kottke
After writing The Cat in the Hat in 1955 using only 223 words, Dr. Seuss bet his publisher that he could write a book using only 50 words.
Except that the website with the text has a typo which puts the word count at 51. At least that’s what I think. I don’t have a copy of the book handy. If you do, you can check it against this:
As long as I was parsing the text in Excel, I thought I’d make a chart of the word frequency. With fifty words, it has the same problems as skyscraper charts, so I’ll spare you the whole thing.
Here’s how I parsed the text:
- Copy the text and Paste Special – Text into Excel
- Text to columns delimited on space
- Copy each of the resulting columns to the bottom of column A (tedious and boring)
- Text to columns again on hyphen (to separate SAM-I-AM)
- Run it through
=UPPER(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,",",""),"?",""),"!",""),".","")) - Create a unique list
and the rest is academic. And all of it pointless. That’s what Fridays are for.
There you go again re-inventing the wheel. You could have just used this:
http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/site/tip/a_macro_to_count_word_frequencies/
For step 3 wouldn’t a copy > paste special > transpose have done the trick? Although on Friday’s there’s nothing like a bit of tedium (word?) to get the day moving.
Had my kids find the book :)
It is a typo.
That Sam-I-am!
That Sam-I-am!
I do not like
that Sam-I-am!
Rob, you don’t have the book memorized? Obviously you haven’t read it often enough. ;-)
I knew instantly it was a typo. I think I’d have known without having read it 16 bajillion times to my own kids, because I have vague memories of having it read to me in my youth.
Did the chart get cut off? I don’t see the actual word count.
JP: I cut it off on purpose because it was too big (and not too interesting). You’ll have to trust me on the word count.