send link to app

MoWa Literary Fingerprint - Author Identifier app for iPhone and iPad


4.6 ( 3456 ratings )
Education Book
Developer: Ben Blatt
Free
Current version: 1.03, last update: 6 years ago
First release : 18 Mar 2017
App size: 154.19 Mb

Is it possible to identify an author just by the rate that they use a few simple words like “the”, “and”, or “at”? Do writers like Stephen King and JK Rowling have such a consistent and unique stylistic fingerprint through all their writing that you could take a picture of just one page – and predict the author based on a few function words alone?

In 1963, statisticians Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace discovered that by examining a few basic words like "the", "and", or "but" they could determine who (either Madison or Hamilton) wrote the disputed Federalist Papers essays.

Today, you can use their methods on any sample of writing by Hamilton, Madison, and twenty of your favorite novelists. Take a picture of a page from a book (just a couple paragraphs are needed) and then the app will run image recognition to convert the picture to text. Then, the MoWa algorithm will be run and guess who the author is.

In head-to-head comparisons, the app is 86% accurate if you can snap at least 250 words. Download now to play with your favorite authors including JK Rowling, Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen, Dan Brown, Stephen King, and many more!

If you like the app, make sure to read Nabokovs Favorite Word Is Mauve by Ben Blatt, which discusses the consequences of literary fingerprints.