[cruise_missile]

I remember years ago during the Clinton administration. That some computer science professor ran a statistical average on use of verbs, nouns and sentence structure (Primary Colors). And compared it against the entire journalists in the MSM. He figured out who the author was.

Why can't this be done on Obama’s two books?

[Poincare]

Why can't this be done on Obama’s two books?

It was done. Obama's two books were written in two different literary styles (from someone who never practiced writing). "Dreams" has a style that closely matches books written by Ayers. "Audacity" is a different story.

[SatinDoll]

It’s already been done. William Ayres, the unrepentent bomber and Weatherman terrorist who is now an English professor, is the author of Obama’s books.

[ratsreek]

That’s agreat isea. Certainly Ayers has written enough psycho terrorist drivel that there’s plenty of material to compare the writing style, verb quantities, etc. that you described in the Clinton book analysis.

[smokingfrog]

As to the scientific evidence unearthed by Cashill, he presents the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES). Take the two excerpts at the beginning of this piece, one from Fugitive and the other from Dreams. the Fugitive excerpt has a FRES of 54 and is written at a 12th grade level. The Dream excerpt has a FRES score of 54.8 and is also written at a 12th grade level. A FRES score can range from 0 to 121, so the similarity between the two is striking.

By comparison, the second memoir penned by Sen Obama in Audacity of Hope was written at a 9th grade level. Either his second memoir was penned by a different author, or he had by that time, learned to talk down to his audience.

Of particular interest is the Cumulative Sum Technique (Qsum) which has been used to prove authorship in courts of law. Qsum is still considered inconclusive however.

Using Qsum, the first analysis is of sentence length. Fugitive averages 23.13 words per sentence, while Dreams averages 23.36. By contrast, Audacity, penned later, clocks in at 29 words per sentence.

Cashill's research discovered additional indicators of a Ayers authorship of Obama's first memoir. Both use nearly identical imagery and style, and strikingly similar anger and disassociation with the truth. Both refer to lies and liars, while taking poetic license with the truth in telling their own stories.

[bvw]

That was Vassar Professor Donald Foster, and he id’d Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors.