Devotees of Frank L. Baum's classic children's books would quickly recognize the above 1 excerpt as the opening of the 15th book in the Oz series, The Royal Book ofOz. They might be harder pressed to say whether these lines were actually written by Baum. The book appeared with Baum's name on the cover in 1921, which was 2 years after Baum's death, and it was billed as the final work of the Royal Historian of Oz. For decades, however, fans and scholars have speculated that Ruth Plumly Thompson, who took over tne series alter Baum died, was tne true author. A few decades ago, literary detectives might have pinned their hopes of solving this mystery on finding the proverbial dusty manuscript in the attic trunk. Today, some scholars are tackling such problems with untra-ditional but more widely available tools: math formulas and computer programs. Earlier this year, statistician Jose Binongo of the Collegiate School and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond published the results of statistical tests making a compelling case that Thompson wrote The Royal Book ofOz. Binongo's paper appeared in the spring Chance, in a special issue on stylometry—the science of measuring literary style.
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机译：弗兰克·鲍姆（Frank L. Baum）的经典儿童读物的奉献者很快就会意识到以上1篇摘录是《绿野仙踪》系列第15本书《绿野仙踪》的开篇。他们可能很难说这些行是否真的是鲍姆写的。这本书以鲍姆（Baum）的名字出现在1921年，这是鲍姆（Baum）逝世两年后的封面，被誉为皇家奥兹历史学家的最后一部作品。然而，几十年来，粉丝和学者一直推测，接替鲍姆去世的系列作品的露丝·普兰利·汤普森（Ruth Plumly Thompson）是真正的作家。几十年前，文学侦探可能希望将解决这个谜题的希望寄托在阁楼树干上发现尘土飞扬的手稿上。如今，一些学者正在使用非传统的但更广泛使用的工具（数学公式和计算机程序）来解决此类问题。今年早些时候，列治文大学学院和弗吉尼亚联邦大学的统计学家何塞·比农戈发表了统计测试的结果，证明汤普森撰写了《皇家绿野仙踪》。 Binongo的论文出现在春天的机会上，这是关于风格学的一期特刊，这是衡量文学风格的科学。
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