An improvement to Zeta
Pervez Rizvi · Digital Scholarship in the Humanities · 2018
Zeta has been described as ‘the most powerful general-purpose authorship tool currently available.’ It has been used to attribute parts of Arden of Faversham to Shakespeare and parts of 3 Henry VI to Marlowe, among other uses. The method was invented by John Burrows, but it is currently used in an adapted form developed by Hugh Craig. This article demonstrates that the method has not been adapted into its simplest form, thereby obscuring a true understanding of what it does. The article proposes an improvement to the method, which makes it easier to implement and may also help to improve researchers’ understanding of it, without affecting the results of Zeta tests already completed.