But we’re talking permutations of sound combinations that can be of arbitrary length. Going by that alternating consonant/vowel pattern above (which simplifies it because you can have consecutive consonant or vowel sounds in words and phrases), the numbers of pairs would be 120,000. That’s less more than 100,000, so for each pair in a phrase, you add at least 5 0s to the total possibilities. 2000 / 5 is 400. Unless I screwed something up, that means the maximum length of a query is 400 consonant/vowel pairs before you have to introduce gaps (which goes against the random noises that got responses). Halve that because it can start with either a consonant or vowel sound.
A rough estimate of the number of sounds in the above paragraph is something like 225, and I simplified my count by ignoring consecutive consonant sounds (which it is full of).
Like yeah, 10 to the 2000 is a huge number but when you’re dealing with permutations, you use up numbers very fast. A more popular counter example is the stat about the total number of permutations for a deck of cards, where they say if you shuffle it well, you probably have a unique sequence of cards that has never been seen before. Iirc, that number is within a the ballpark of the order of magnitude of that total atoms in observable universe estimation. And that’s just with 52 possibilities and no repetition (calculated by factorial, whereas sound combination possibilities grows even faster and isn’t limited to 52 options).
Edit: corrected that bit where I rounded the 120,000 to 100,000 to simplify the math by looking for a minimal value rather than the actual value.
Humans have the ability to produce about 600 different consonant sounds and 200 vowel sounds so it seems safe to say all bases are covered.
But we’re talking permutations of sound combinations that can be of arbitrary length. Going by that alternating consonant/vowel pattern above (which simplifies it because you can have consecutive consonant or vowel sounds in words and phrases), the numbers of pairs would be 120,000. That’s
lessmore than 100,000, so for each pair in a phrase, you add at least 5 0s to the total possibilities. 2000 / 5 is 400. Unless I screwed something up, that means the maximum length of a query is 400 consonant/vowel pairs before you have to introduce gaps (which goes against the random noises that got responses). Halve that because it can start with either a consonant or vowel sound.A rough estimate of the number of sounds in the above paragraph is something like 225, and I simplified my count by ignoring consecutive consonant sounds (which it is full of).
Like yeah, 10 to the 2000 is a huge number but when you’re dealing with permutations, you use up numbers very fast. A more popular counter example is the stat about the total number of permutations for a deck of cards, where they say if you shuffle it well, you probably have a unique sequence of cards that has never been seen before. Iirc, that number is within a the ballpark of the order of magnitude of that total atoms in observable universe estimation. And that’s just with 52 possibilities and no repetition (calculated by factorial, whereas sound combination possibilities grows even faster and isn’t limited to 52 options).
Edit: corrected that bit where I rounded the 120,000 to 100,000 to simplify the math by looking for a minimal value rather than the actual value.
More sounds doesn’t make it better lol. With that many, you get a max length of around 700-800 sounds