Answers.Body: <p>You can rephrase your question as a statistical problem, where you for each word or n-gram try to predict the most likely correctly spelled version of each word or n-gram based on your knowledge of the distributions of these across a corpus of text in the target language.</p>
  
  <p>This is how spell-checkers work.</p>
  
  <p>Peter Norvig (who wrote <em>Artificial Intelligence: A Moderne Approach</em> with Stuart Russell) has an article on the this with a short, easy-to-read code example and a description of the statistics behind it on his web page: <a href="http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="How to write a Spelling Corrector">How to write a Spelling Corrector</a>.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2017-11-05T21:06:49.297Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2017-11-05T21:06:49.297Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: mjul
Body: <p>Given an ease with which a human can read a text scrambled in a special way, like the following passage popular a while ago</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer
    in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is
    taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be
    a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is
    bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
    wrod as a wlohe.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>could you train a computer to restore the original? Are there any studies/known instruments that can achieve this?</p>
  
  <p>I am talking about mildly scrambled/damaged text, like the above, not a totally random permutations or random omission of letters.</p>
  
Tags: <machine-learning>
Title: Is it possible to restore scrambled/damaged text?
UserDisplayName: Yrogirg
ThreadText: # Is it possible to restore scrambled/damaged text?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2017-11-05)
  
  Given an ease with which a human can read a text scrambled in a special way, like the following passage popular a while ago
  
  > Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer
  > in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is
  > taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be
  > a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is
  > bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
  > wrod as a wlohe.
  
  could you train a computer to restore the original? Are there any studies/known instruments that can achieve this?
  
  I am talking about mildly scrambled/damaged text, like the above, not a totally random permutations or random omission of letters.
  
  **Tags:** machine-learning
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2017-11-05. Score: 2
  
  You can rephrase your question as a statistical problem, where you for each word or n-gram try to predict the most likely correctly spelled version of each word or n-gram based on your knowledge of the distributions of these across a corpus of text in the target language.
  
  This is how spell-checkers work.
  
  Peter Norvig (who wrote *Artificial Intelligence: A Moderne Approach* with Stuart Russell) has an article on the this with a short, easy-to-read code example and a description of the statistics behind it on his web page: [How to write a Spelling Corrector](http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html "How to write a Spelling Corrector").
  
  
  ---
  
  