Paul Chambers: Employing Mathematics to Identify the Real Shakespeare

Paul Chambers applies text mining analytics and Bayesian analysis to the Shakespeare authorship question. Based on machine learning and artificial intelligent algorithms, he illustrates the use of textual analytics to compare the poetry of Oxford to the poetic works attributed to William Shakespeare. Historical and literary sources are used only to provide a starting point for the Bayesian analysis. Using only timing events and statistical text based analytical tools, a relative Bayesian inference calculation is performed comparing the relative likelihoods of authorship between Oxford and the man from Stratford. This blend of science, mathematics, and culture demonstrate that the Earl of Oxford is orders-of-magnitude more likely to be the author.
Bio: Paul Chambers is an expert in data science and statistics with a Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Maryland at College Park and a PhD in Nuclear Engineering. He has served as a Senior Data Scientist with numerous firms including EEOC, CMS, Hitachi Consulting and is currently with Blockchains Inc.
Learn more at shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org
Employing Mathematics to Identify the Real Shakespeare by Paul Chambers: shakespeareoxfordfellowship.o...

[@tedwong6605]

Thank you so much Paul, for this fascinating presentation. You may have heard of Robert Prechter who has brought out his book 'Oxford's Voices' after 25 years' research. He convincingly argues that Oxford used many pseudonyms and allonyms in his time, including names of Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, John Lyly and Thomas Churchyard. It would be very interesting indeed to see what your text mining analytics show. I believe this will proof to be a very rich vein.

[@rstritmatter]

Erasing all those persons out of the Elizabethan literary culture on flimsy and untested methods will not help to advance a better understanding of Shakespeare or the authorship question. Those persons named are very real writers, who each lived and wrote. Prechter's arguments to the contrary are without foundation and routinely ignore any contrary evidence. Oxfordians need to raise the bar, not lower it.

[@ronroffel1462]

I was at first skeptical, but the way he explains things for laypersons makes things much more understandable. Bravo for giving Oxfordians another tool to use in the authorship debate. It beats the heck out of the stylometric analyses Stratfordians often use. They go against proper statistical procedures to "prove" the Stratford man wrote the works attributed to him. The key to his presentation isn't that the numbers favour de Vere over the Stratford man as the author, but that independent studies came to the same conclusion using different criteria. Should any astute Shakespearean scholar take note of this presentation and be open minded, they would do well to take a good hard look at the evidence for Oxford in light of what Chambers and others have presented.

[@UtubeAW]

Excellent!

[@kerrykirk9901]

Fascinating! Well presented.

[@sheilakethley5351]

Thanks for the Ogden Nash reference!

[@RodCornholio]

Outstanding

[@manciano2009]

¿why not John Florio?

[@peckerwood6078]

With the benefit of this, It is without doubt much clearer why so many people are found guilty when they are in fact innocent. While you can't fool all of the people all of the time you can fool most of the people most of the time with sufficient guile. With the exception of the Analytical comparison of DNA, of the suspect to the known profile of the perpetrator, it is a very flawed approach. Figures lie and liars figure is an axiom which holds true in every case. The correlation of DNA being a near 1:1 with conclusive data the rest is still only a light in the dark and while that beneath the light is obvious; there is still a whole hell of a lot of dark. With the persistent occurrence of world class researchers and scientists being found out to have not only falsified their data, plagiarized their Phd thesis, and fit the curve to reflect their findings all is dross. Love Science, Mathematics, Calculus, Number theory etc. however also understand that the rule is good to know and yet any student of English, as a language, knows that it is the exceptions to the rules that make one a master of the language which only native speakers can ascertain to know only because they know. Gnosis not Numbers will unknot the Gordian! Just know that Numbers leads to Gnosis!

[@patricksullivan4329]

Actually, more guilty people are acquitted than the opposite, and by a huge margin. Try thinking about the authorship question this way: Suppose it was a crime to have written Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and the other works known as the Shakespeare canon. Then put William of Stratford on trial for that crime, using the known biographical facts as the prosecutorial evidence. If Paul Chambers was the defense attorney, the judge probably wouldn't even send the case to the jury for deliberation, he'd just dismiss the charge outright for lack of evidence. Not only is there 'reasonable doubt' of Shackspere's guilt, there is actually overwhelming evidence that he is innocent of the charges.

[@peckerwood6078]

​@@patricksullivan4329

[@geraldvanwilgen]

Never ceases to amaze me how the English will polarize literally everything for their own entertainment and don't bother to read the actual plays.

[@barabbasrosebud9282]

Absolute rubbish! All the analysis shows is that the same source material was used by the authors in question (there were libraries, though not free, and printed books were relatively cheap and plentiful at the time, I personally own many period examples). The blood type, fingerprint, and DNA analogy is bogus because blood types and fingerprints correlate with DNA. Shakspeare wasn’t known in Stratford because Stratford was essentially a “bedroom community”, but he was very well known in London. Shakspeare was also an actor, married with children, and collaborated with john Fletcher et al. Shakspeare wasn’t listed as one of the great authors of the Elizabethan court in 1622 because he wasn’t a member of the “court” per se and he had died in 1616. Finally, Shakspeare’s legal knowledge came from the common contemporary practice of the public sitting in at court proceedings (it was free entertainment).

[@floatingholmes]

Can you provide evidence that Shakespeare was unknown because Stratford was a bedroom community? Or that he learned law by watching courtrooms? Or that Fletcher even knew him? We know no one ever said a playwrite lived in Stratford, but how about evidence of anyone in his lifetime saying he was an “actor”? No. Not a shred of evidence for any of your claims actually exists. Nor does this analysis show that multiple people knew the same sources. The idea that books were “relatively cheap” is another false/ridiculous statement. Books cost a great deal- both the leafs and the binding, hence the 90% illiteracy rate. What led you to believe these hypothetical connections between Shaksper of Stratford and the works were based on evidence?

[@stevenyafet]

@Barbarras it is not rubbish at all. If you want to argue with the Bayes argument then maybe question whether the 3 Dartmouth metrics may have been cherry-picked with a sort of Scheffe Theorem-related false confidence level as a result. In any case, probably not so. Moreover, all the autobiographical tie-ins to Oxford in the plays (Hamlet, Tempest ... any play really) supply many more Bayes tests with high power which hooked us in the first place..... Well come on get real.

[@floatingholmes]

Tell me you didn’t understand the presentation without telling me you didn’t understand the presentation.

[@jameshartley5]

So O.J. really WAS innocent?

[@patricksullivan4329]

No, if statisticians had been the jury, OJ would have been convicted. And quickly.

[@MrAbzu]

Would Oxford write poems? Yes, it was not beneath his station. Would Oxford write plays? No, he would provide material to script writers who would do the menial work of organizing the material into scenes and acts. No script from that era has ever been found in a Lordly hand, the Baconians claim to have found revisions in the margins of a play, Richard ll, by Bacon.

[@patricksullivan4329]

" Would Oxford write plays?" We have evidence from 16th century Englishmen that Oxford did, in fact, write plays. One even calling him the best for comedy.

[@ellenmarch3095]

​@@patricksullivan4329 But MrAbzu has spoken!! (Jk).

[@floatingholmes]

“The menial work of organizing the material into scenes and acts” Lol. Tell me you know nothing about writing plays without telling me you know nothing about writing plays.