Re: [Algorithms] Algorithm for determining 'word difficulty'

[Matthew H. <ma...@ev...>]

As nice as "automatic" would be, I think if you are targeting very young
kids you'll also want to add a "human tuned" metric to the weighting
system.  As you've no doubt seen, each school grade level has a list of
"sight words" that kids are supposed to know, as well as other common or
high-frequency words that they are supposed to be picking up.  I'd guess
this information is available somewhere/somehow - even if it means asking
some teachers for help.  (For that matter, it's possible there are
state-mandated lists of words that kids must know at different grade
levels.)

I'd guess that the younger the age target, the more "human tuned" the word
selection is going to need to be.  As they get older, you can probably rely
more on purely statistical metrics, etc.

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:18 PM, John Ratcliff
<jra...@gm...>wrote:

> I have an interesting little project I'm working on and I thought I would
> solicit the list to see if anyone else has some ideas.
>
> I'm creating an educational word game that focuses on spelling and
> vocabulary; it is designed to run on mobile devices (Ipad, Iphone, Droid,
> etc.).  This is just a fun little side project I'm doing so my son can learn
> more hands on programming.  My daughter is doing the artwork so we are
> making it a little family project.
>
> I first wrote this game for an Apple II in 1983 so it's kind of fun to be
> making a new version for today's devices.  Back then, I didn't have enough
> memory to store a really large word list.  Today I have the ability to store
> the entire English dictionary.  And, not just the words, but also every
> component associated with each word (synonyms, etymology, definitions, etc.)
>
> The algorithm I am looking for is how to automatically come up with a
> 'difficulty' metric for each word in the English language.
>
> My thoughts are that I could consider the following:
>
> (1) Length of the word, though to be honest very short words can be
> difficult too if they are obscure.
> (2) Number of definitions.
> (3) Field of study of the word (biology, physics, etc.) The open source
> English dictionary I have access to provides this data.
> (4) Whether the word is a verb, noun, etc.
> (5) Cross reference each word against a thesaurus and consider the
> difficulty/obscurity based on how many synonyms and antonyms there are
> total.
>
> One thing that would help immensely if if I had access to a word list of
> the 'most common' words in the English language.  Hopefully I can find such
> a list and this would provide me an excellent first guess at whether or not
> a word is obscure or not.
>
> When you play the game you get to choose the difficulty level you want to
> play at really could have two metrics.  Difficulty to spell, or difficulty
> in terms of knowing recognizing the word.  (The game itself more or less
> works like wheel or fortune or hangman, you are just trying to guess a
> single word rather than a phrase).
>
> Any thoughts on an algorithm which could more or less automatically score
> the entire English language by 'difficultly to spell' and 'difficulty to
> recognize'?  Assuming you have as input all of the data in a standard
> dictionary and thesaurus?
>
> Thanks,
>
> John
>
>
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