The histograms of response length are shown in Fig 1. The mean for the blurry picture was 58.7 words, while that for the non-blurry picture was 74.2 words. The difference between the two frequency distributions shows a clear pattern, with the low frequency classes having markedly higher counts in the B group than in the N group, while the N group was consistently higher in the highest frequency classes. The Shannon-Wiener diversity index for group N was 4.57, while it was 5.27 for group B. Fig 2. The purpose of this little study was to generate some kind of foothold for thinking about the ways that scientists give descriptions to things, and how these descriptions vary with the blurriness of their subject.
Language is an inherently digital medium of communication.
Thus I began this study with an a priori guess - a wrong one I see now. Thus I expected shorter responses in the N group. Instead the responses for the B group had a lower mean length. The main effect I had not foreseen was the efficient use of metaphor by the B group respondents. Almost every description appealed to another image that the respondent supposed was likely to be familiar to a reader.