## Searching for low Munroe indices

Nathan:

$$\text{“chauvinist pig”} | \text{pig}= 7.1$$, but what I think you meant was $$\text{“chauvinist pig”} | \text{chauvinist}$$, which is an impressive $$2.1$$.

To answer your other inquiry, $$\text{“male chauvinist pig”} | \text{“chauvinist pig”}$$ is $$0.40$$. I’ll concede—that’s really low.

(I defined the Munroe index and explained its syntax in my previous post.)

## Munroe index

In xkcd 798, Adjectives, Randall Munroe of xkcd established an index for judging how common an intensifier is for a given adjective. I’d like to formalize this a bit, and expand it to any phrase of the form modifier + modified. The Munroe (or xkcd) index

$$“\textbf{a}~\textbf{b}” | \textbf{b}$$

where $$\textbf{a}$$ modifies $$\textbf{b}$$ is

$$-\ln \left( \frac{\text{Ghits }“\textbf{b}”}{\text{Ghits }“\textbf{a}~\textbf{b}”} \right)$$

(the quotes are very important; the Ghits must be for exact matches)

Naturally, the lower the index, the more common the modification is.

To take the example I previously had on the site, $$\text{“suicidal ideation”}|\text{ideation}$$, where Ghits(“ideation”) = 5,910,000 and Ghits(“suicidal ideation”) = 2,230,000 is $$0.97$$, which is very low. For reference, the lowest on the original xkcd were in the fives; the original lowest, $$\text{“annoying as shit”} | \text{annoying}$$, is now about $$6.5$$.

The only problem is that these fluctuate from day to day, and so are completely non-reproducible.

## Note

In a fit of rage, I completely deleted my previous content.

(Alright, it was an accident. I didn’t actually mean to—I was having serious, and probably fatal, configuration issues on the backend—and to be honest, I’d like some of it back. I do have a backup, but it’s corrupted. I may attempt to restore some of the more substantial content at some later point.)

I’ll start off right where I left off, as if nothing happened.