Analysis of Environmental Data

In-Class Library of Babel

3-Letter Words

You can use the following code to generate random 3-letter words.

• Run it several times and see how many tries it takes to get a real English word (or a word in another language you might know).

cat(letters[sample(26, size = 3, replace = T)], sep = "")

## osn

If you are daring, try modifying the code to generate 4-letter words.

Some things to consider:

• If we assume that there are 26 letters available, how many 3-letter words are possible?
  • Let’s use the symbol W to refer to this number.
• How many 4-letter words are possible? Think of your answer in terms of W.

Questions

• Q1 (1 pt.): How many 3-letter words are possible?
• Q2 (1 pt.): Were you able to use the 3-letter word generating code to create a valid word, and if so how many tries did it take?
• Q3 (1 pt.): How many 4-letter words are possible? Express your answer in terms of W.
• Q4 (2 pts.): Consider the reading as a whole and decide on one or more of your favorite moments in the story. Briefly describe why your group found them interesting, and if possible describe any connection to combinatorics or probability theory. Be sure to mention if there are any connections to your work or field of research.