An Assessment of Cumulative Sum Charts for Authorship Attribution
Michael L. Hilton · Literary and Linguistic Computing · 1993
Morton and Michaelson have proposed using cumulative sum charts of various word classes as a method of authorship attribution. Their method has been criticized for its lack of a firm statistical basis and its subjective nature. We present an alternate method, based on weighted cumulative sums, that has a firm basis in statistics and uses rigorous, well-established testing procedures. The results of experiments conducted to test the procedures. The result of experiments conducted to test the validity of weighted cumulative sums for authorship attribution are also presented. These results indicate cumulative sums are not consistently reliable indicators of authorship