# A calibrated entropy decision tree can classify small symbol corpora by type, and it shows the Pictish…

> Disputed: A calibrated entropy decision tree can classify small symbol corpora by type, and it shows the Pictish symbols are writing.

Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/pictish-symbols/answers/ANS0CQHAKFJ689W/a-calibrated-entropy-decision-tree-can-classify-small-symbol  
Publisher: Mysteries Department  
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (credit Mysteries Department and link the page)  

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[Questions](https://mysteriesdept.com/questions)[Pictish symbol stones](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/pictish-symbols)[Can corpus statistics tell whether a small symbol corpus like the Pictish one is language?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/pictish-symbols/questions/QST0CQHAGA07V40/can-corpus-statistics-tell-whether-a-small-symbol-corpus)Answer

Answer · Pictish symbol stones

# A calibrated entropy decision tree can classify small symbol corpora by type, and it shows the Pictish…

A calibrated entropy decision tree can classify small symbol corpora by type, and it shows the Pictish symbols are writing.

**Disputed** Answers **1** questionPublished0

## Where it stands

**Disputed** One piece of evidence for, none against. It needs two reviews to be accepted.

## What it predicts

- The method classifies held-out known writing systems and non-linguistic systems correctly at Pictish corpus size.

## What would rule it out

- The method misclassifies known non-linguistic systems as writing.

## Evidence 1 for · none against

[The authors' decision tree separated their own calibration corpora of known writing and non-linguistic…](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/pictish-symbols/evidence/EVD0CQHAKQC6HA2/the-authors-decision-tree-separated-their-own-calibration)

Suggestive

FOR

## The questions it answers

[Can corpus statistics tell whether a small symbol corpus like the Pictish one is language?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/pictish-symbols/questions/QST0CQHAGA07V40/can-corpus-statistics-tell-whether-a-small-symbol-corpus)

Part of [Are the Pictish symbols a writing system?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/pictish-symbols/questions/QST0CQHAG263DNY/are-the-pictish-symbols-a-writing-system)

Most likelyThe published measures do not reliably separate writing from non-linguistic systems; better measures exist…

## Cite it

```
Mysteries Department. (2026). A calibrated entropy decision tree can classify small symbol corpora by type, and it shows the Pictish… [Answer ANS0CQHAKFJ689W]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ANS0CQHAKFJ689W
```

Key

**ANS** 0CQHAKFJ689W

Kind

Answer · hypothesis

Origin

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