[lnkForumImage]
TotalShareware - Download Free Software
Confronta i prezzi di migliaia di prodotti.
Asp Forum
 Home | Login | Register | Search 


 

Forums >

comp.lang.ruby

Random name generator!

Dss Jss

4/10/2008 9:40:00 PM

Hello to all;

I'm testing out different ways to output randomly generated names. I've
toyed with some basic algorithms but recently I've become hooked on the
idea of using a Markov chain in the process to generate names based on a
text file. Below is a link to my first effort - I won't even begin to
start on what a catastrophe it is and I don't expect you to understand
it:

http://pastie.textmate....

It's hideous. I'm never going near it again. It basically looks at each
line of a text file and throws the adjacent letter pairings into a big
hash with probability weightings, moves through the probability hash
coughing out likely letter results based on the previous entry. I think
the term for it is "first-order Markov chain".

What I'd like to see if anyone has any suggestions, or more importantly
examples of how this should be done? I'm fairly certain there are more
elegant ways about doing this. Thanks.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....
3 Answers

Ken Bloom

4/10/2008 11:51:00 PM

0

On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:40:17 -0500, Dss Jss wrote:

> Hello to all;
>
> I'm testing out different ways to output randomly generated names. I've
> toyed with some basic algorithms but recently I've become hooked on the
> idea of using a Markov chain in the process to generate names based on a
> text file. Below is a link to my first effort - I won't even begin to
> start on what a catastrophe it is and I don't expect you to understand
> it:
>
> http://pastie.textmate....
>
> It's hideous. I'm never going near it again. It basically looks at each
> line of a text file and throws the adjacent letter pairings into a big
> hash with probability weightings, moves through the probability hash
> coughing out likely letter results based on the previous entry. I think
> the term for it is "first-order Markov chain".
>
> What I'd like to see if anyone has any suggestions, or more importantly
> examples of how this should be done? I'm fairly certain there are more
> elegant ways about doing this. Thanks.

http://rubyquiz.com/q...

The solutions are for word markov chains, but you could easily adapt any
of them for letter markov chains.

--Ken

--
Ken (Chanoch) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu...

Sean Mehonoshen

4/11/2008 9:47:00 AM

0

I would suggest using combinations of phonemes rather than letters. It
would simplify the problem and generate more natural sounding
combinations.


--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Ken Bloom

4/11/2008 8:51:00 PM

0

On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:47:20 -0500, Sean Mehonoshen wrote:

> I would suggest using combinations of phonemes rather than letters. It
> would simplify the problem and generate more natural sounding
> combinations.

<hat role="computational linguistics">
Too hard, because then you have to specify what they are. Use a higher-
order markov model (like 4 or 5), and you'll get pronouncable results.

One of my colleagues wrote http://lingcog.iit.edu/~scube...
gibberish.sh, which is a 4th-order markov model of English letters. It
shoudl be relatively pronouncable, and might suit your needs.
</hat>

--
Ken (Chanoch) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu...