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In an author attribution problem where a battery of tests of discrimination is brought to bear on samples of text from a number of different works thought, possibly mistakenly, to be by a given author (in our case, Goldsmith), difficulties arise if the number of samples of text from work known to be that of the given author is small compared with the number of tests. We propose a screening procedure whereby ineffective tests are excluded from subsequent analysis, but the number of tests may still be too large for the application of certain standard types of analysis. We give two methods for dealing with this. Over 100 essays have been attributed to Goldsmith since his death. 12 of these are here submitted to an analysis from which we conclude that several traditional ascriptions are well founded, that three should be considered very doubtful and that there are good grounds for promoting two essays to the canon.
Mannion et al. (Sat,) studied this question.