The Language of Dolphins and Aliens

A scientist named Laurence Doyle decided to apply information theory to language. The idea is simple: Language is different from a random signal in a very special way. To begin with, create a chain of completely random words, say 10,000 words, and then plot on a graph the frequency that any particular word shows up. The resulting graph would show a zero slope (i.e. horizontal) line. Any one word has the exact same likelihood as any other word. However, intelligent signals like language, is different. Some words we use quite often (e.g. the, of, a, to, I), some words are less common (e.g. tomorrow, happy, house, dinner), and other words are quite uncommon (e.g. oblique, transistor, intercept). If you plot human language by the frequency of words used, a 45 degree slope results. The common words (e.g. the, of, a) will show up often, the less common words less often. Interestingly, this slope results when you test ANY human language. Therefore, even if you don't recognize a certain language as even being a language, just graph the signal and its slope will determine if it's random noise or an intelligent language.

So Doyle tested dolphin sounds. He graphed each distinct phoneme (i.e. basic unit) of dolphin vocalization. Doyle found it renders a perfect 45 degree slope. Even though we have absolutely no way of telling what dolphins are communicating, we can be certain it is an intelligent language, not just random sounds. Indeed, information theory can even determine how complex the language is. Dolphin language rates at a '4' on the scale whereas human language rates around '8' or '9'.​

​Then other scientists had an idea: what if we test every signal there is in the universe? You could measure the subtle seemingly random fluctuations in the magnetosphere of the sun. If distinct patterns matched up to the 45 degree slope it would be a huge discovery and would force us to come to terms with some big ideas.

Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is currently attempting to process signals from deep space in just this way. For a signal from space, or anywhere on Earth even, to fit a 45 degree slope would be so absurdly improbable that it would be de-facto proof of intelligent communication even if we didn't recognize the signal as language at all.

Source: http://blog.minitab.com/blog/adventures-in-statistics/using-statistics-to-analyze-words