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As a final analytic exercise, we ask ChatGPT to shift away from basic significance testing into the specifics of model comparison, forming a series of…
But, hold on. Have we not just taken our control analysis too far in the reverse direction? Is it really as damning to our original control analysis a…
Z408_Final18_MonteCarlo_Drift0.png
Returning, then, to the original research question, which we posed as: Does the final line of the Z408 exhibit a degree of vertical copying from p…
Monte Carlo result retained The Monte Carlo test … asks how often a shuffled Z408-like grid gives the terminal 18 position a pull-down score at l…
Requesting ChatGPT to reconstruct and run the line comparison test, having dropped the constraint of only testing against lines above the line in ques…
But there are problems with this analysis, as proposed and run by ChatGPT. Most notably, it does not appear that we should be wholly satisfied with th…
Having been presented with the question as to what the analysis thus far helps us to conclude about the likelihood, or otherwise, of the final 18 ciph…
Conclusion Under this model, the Z408 final row appears to be a genuine statistical outlier. A fair summary would be: The final symbols of Z408 con…
9. Limitations This does not prove that Zodiac intentionally created the final symbols by copying.. Alternative explanations remain possible: the…
8. Interpretation The results suggest that the final row has an unusually high degree of recoverability from symbols above it. The evidence is mainly…
7. Monte Carlo test A second test generated random Z408-like grids. For this, each simulation: preserved the same symbols, preserved their frequ…
6. Internal row comparison Every other row was tested as if it were the unexplained ending. Results: Final row: 26 Next highest: …
5. Strict vertical pull-down test Rules: Source symbols must appear in the same columns. Only rows above the target may be used. Left-to-right …
4. Scoring method Each row was treated as a potential “mystery row.” The algorithm searched rows above it for matching fragments. A copied fragment r…