Fun with Papers

I just finished a paper. I was using spellcheck to go over some corrections. At the end, it has an absurd rating system (Flesch-Kincaid) with some stats. Curious, I decided to check on a few papers (new to old) to see how they measured up next to such silly numbers.

Paper:
Women and sexual discrimination in the military from World War II to the present.
2119 words
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 13
Sentences per Paragraph: 6.4
Words per Sentence: 23.1
Characters per Word: 4.9

Paper:
Renaissance women writers and virtue and learning as justification for holding a pen
2431 words
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 11.2
Sentences per Paragraph: 4.6
Words per Sentence: 22.8
Characters per Word: 4.7

Paper:
Rape of the Lock and Sarpedon's Speech from the Aeneas
3617 words
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 11.1
Sentences per Paragraph: 6
Words per Sentence: 20.8
Characters per Word: 4.7

Paper:
Nina Baym in Feminist Jane Eyre Alluding Gender Theory
1268 words
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 11.5
Sentences per Paragraph: 8.7
Words per Sentence: 20.1
Characters per Word: 4.8

Paper:
The Iliad and Greece
1545 words
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 12
Sentences per Paragraph: 6.1
Words per Sentence: 23.1
Characters per Word: 4.7

Paper:
Paper on Poetry
1679 words
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.4
Sentences per Paragraph: 7.5
Words per Sentence: 15.3
Characters per Word: 4.5

Poetry Portfolio for Class:
10 Poems
1585 words
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 3.0
Sentences per Paragraph: 1.1
Words per Sentence: 8.6
Characters per Word: 4.3

Important Document:
US Declaration of Independence (excluding signatures)
1334 words
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 15.1
Sentences per Paragraph: 5
Words per Sentence: 37.8
Characters per Word: 4.9

So what can we conclude?

1. Flesch-Kincaid apparently hates poetry. As the example on the bottom demonstrates, that is not a 3rd grade reading level.
2. If I were to put stock in such number, I've been fairly steadily improving. Of course, any numerical analysis of writing is going to be off, especially when automated by Microsoft Word.
3. If I were to statistically analyze available data, I suspect the only significant change in my numerically assessed writing from freshman year to now happened between freshmen and sophomore year. Otherwise, what's changed isn't so easily quantitative, but rather pertains mostly to simple quality and knowing a piddly bit more now than I did.

And yet... and yet the numbers are fascinating. They have a certain authority, like they can tell me more about myself than I know. An illusory authority.

(Here is a poem from the portfolio, if you're curious... we were supposed to write a nonsense poem)

Cacophony in Spenser

Klinkity klankity konky concocting,
Simply windling, saundering engendering
Flanking forsaking intaking nerve-wracking
Philandering vanity, why’re you defendering?
Dungeons and dragons 3D self-rendering
In a way almost gay in orbital seancing
Whiling away the legal tendering
The static consumes, this self-effasive dancing
Naked and disfigured, it needs a little pants-ing.