Plato’s Republic: Syllable Patterns Prose rhythm is characterized by the occurrence of fi ve-syllable sequences in long passages of text. This characterization may be used to assess the similarity among passages of text and sometimes the identity of authors. The following information is based on an article by D. Wishart and S. V. Leach appearing in Computer Studies of the Humanities and Verbal Behavior (Vol. 3, pp. 90–99). Syllables were categorized as long or short. On analyzing Plato’s Republic, Wishart and Leach found that about 26.1% of the fi ve-syllable sequences are of the type in which two are short and three are long. Suppose that Greek archaeologists have found an ancient manuscript dating back to Plato’s time (about 427–347 b.c.).

A random sample of 317 fi ve-syllable sequences from the newly discovered manuscript showed that 61 are of the type two short and three long. Do the data indicate that the population proportion of this type of fi ve-syllable sequence is different (either way) from the text of Plato’s Republic? Use a 5 0.01.