An Attempt To Calculate The Most Inherently Funny Word In Existence

@FunnyestWords - funnyestwords@gmail.com January 20, 2014

Methods
This is a completely foolhearted attempt to nd, with mathematics and statistics alone, the most inherently funny word in the entire English language. Some words are funnier than others. Some words, with or without context of their meaning, sound funny when spoken aloud. This paper lays out one possible method for nding funny words. There is no evidence that this method works, or is superior to other methods, but as far as my quick research shows this is the only attempt to quantify how funny a word is. A word may be funny because it sounds surprising. Words with common sounds and common syllable patterns are unlikely to be funny because they are heard so often. This algorithm relies on the assumption that words that sound surprising will also sound funny. In order to calculate the level of surprise within the pronunciation of a word, and therefore hopefully its funniness, the following methods were used. A list of over 133,000 English words was downloaded from the Natural Language Tool Kit From this list of words, a list of 39 distinct sounds were identied. Each word was then described in terms of these sounds. For every sound, the frequency of that sound appearing in any word was measured. For every word of k syllables, k-1 pairs of syllables were listed. For instance, the word boink was broken up into B-OY, OY-N, and N-K. A transition matrix with dimensions 39x39 was then described. The probabilities in the matrix were determined by the probability that one syllable would follow the next. For instance, B is much more likely to be followed by OI than AH. Using the frequency of every sound appearing, and the transition matrix, the probability of each word existing was measured. These words were then ranked on these probabilities and the number of sounds within them. 1

Results
A random selection of words that this method determines to be funny will be tweeted out by @Funnyestwords periodically. I do not think this method worked entirely, but many of the words that the algorithm determines as funny are, in my opinion, funny. I realize that a person could probably compile a list of funnier words, but this experiment was to measure the limits of logic and humor. Additionally, while a survey or ELO rating system of words may produce funnier words, the point of this exercise is to determine a list of funny words based on the properties of the words alone and not human input.

Questions?
Please e-mail me if you have any questions or would like to participate in this experiment!