Wed Mar 27 14:20:41 1996

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Date: Wed, 27 Mar 96 11:05:28 PST
From: broman@Np.nosc.mil (Vincent Broman)
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In-Reply-To:  (message from Timothy John Finney on Tue, 26 Mar 1996 14:08:29 +0800 (WST))
Subject: MS survival
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finney@central.murdoch.edu.au suggested:
> Nevertheless, a first step to answering the likelihood of survival
> question is to plot the number of known MSS versus their estimated ages
> and work out how probability of survival varies with age. That might even
> give us a way of estimating how many MSS have ever been made. Any
> statisticians out there?

We know the count of MS survivors, this is plotted in Aland's introductory
book, but we don't know directly the count of MSS produced in a century,
nor the rate of destruction/loss.
Of the latter unknowns, at least one would have to be modeled
to be able to calculate the other.

Production might be estimated from growth in Church population,
changes in the distribution of Greek-speakers, and estimates
of the useful lifetime of a MS which suffers no catastrophe.
The proportion of MSS that survive each century would depend on
the MS material, on whether on not book-burnings occur, climate,
and usage of the MS, at least.

S Lake, I think it was, suggested that the scarcity of MSS which are
directly related to each other by descent might be due to a practice of
destroying an exemplar after it was copied.


Vincent Broman,  code 786 Bayside                        Email: broman@nosc.mil
Naval Command Control and Ocean Surveillance Center, RDT&E Div.
San Diego, CA  92152-6147,  USA                          Phone: +1 619 553 1641
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