Frequency analysis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In cryptanalysis, frequency analysis (also known as counting letters) is the study of the frequency of letters or groups of letters in a ciphertext. The method is used as an aid to breaking classical ciphers.
Frequency analysis is based on the fact that, in any given stretch of written language, certain letters and combinations of letters occur with varying frequencies. Moreover, there is a characteristic distribution of letters that is roughly the same for almost all samples of that language.
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See also
- ETAOIN SHRDLU
- Letter frequencies
- Arabic Letter Frequency
- Index of coincidence
- Topics in cryptography
- Zipf's law
- A Void, a novel by Georges Perec. The original French text is written without the letter e, as is the English translation. The Spanish version contains no a.
- Gadsby (novel), a novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. The novel is written as a lipogram, which does not include words that contain the letter E.
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