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Shlomo Argamon, Interpreting Burrows's Delta: Geometric and Probabilistic Foundations, Literary and Linguistic Computing, Volume 23, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 131–147, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqn003
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Abstract
While Burrows's intuitive and elegant ‘Delta’ measure for authorship attribution has proven to be extremely useful for authorship attribution, a theoretical understanding of its operation has remained somewhat obscure. In this article, I address this issue by introducing a geometric interpretation of Delta, which further allows us to interpret Delta as a probabilistic ranking principle. This interpretation gives us a better understanding of the method's fundamental assumptions and potential limitations, as well as leading to several well-founded variations and extensions.