R-VALUES

R VALUES. I generally don't use Rotenberg R-values unless I'm dealing with a 10-letter axis term (or in a few cases with a 9-letter axis term that contains relatively rare Hebrew letters like tet, samech. gimel or zayin). R-values are available on Code Finder reports, but I always edit them out because I disagree with how they are used by that program. Normally I assign no value to an axis term that is 8 letters or less in length, and the higher the ELS rank of an axis term, the more I penalize the combined odds of a matrix. Here p is the probability that the characters of an ELS will match the characters of a text in a random placement. N is the number of placements of an ELS of the given skip. An R value is defined as 1/E where E = pN. E is the expected number of times that in a random letter permuted text a random placement of an ELS with absolute skip less than the absolute skip of the ELS found in the Torah text, will match the characters of the Torah text in the placement. See Code Finder: Scores or Probabilities by Dr. Robert Haralick.

       Now, let's simplify all this a bit and apply it to Figure 1. If you're wondering about how likely the axis term was to be found in wrapped Torah, the answer is that this phrase occurs twice times at an ELS, but the one shown on Figure 1 is at the higher skip. It has an R value of 0.484 which means that based on letter frequency there is about a 32.8% chance to find it (Note: to change R value, found on the Code Finder report [in this case 0.484], to percent chance to find it, enter .484 into a scientific calculator like the TI30XA, hit second function, LOG, then 1/x and multiple by 100). As noted above, I normally consider including the R value in a calculation when the axis term is 10 letters or longer or 9 letters with a rare letter like tet, samech or zayin.