Equation 5 · Standardising the Record: How Writing Became Evidence
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which for any constant per-generation fidelity below one falls exponentially in n . The model is illustrative and its value lies in the assumption it exposes rather than in any number it produces. It assumes errors accumulate independently and are never removed. The correction apparatus is exactly the violation of that assumption: a corrector comparing a copy against another exemplar can subtract error as well as add it, which is why long manuscript traditions do not simply dissolve. Where the assumption does hold — where a single exemplar is copied without collation — the exponential intuition is closer to right. The historical variable that matters is therefore not copying rate but access…
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which for any constant per-generation fidelity below one falls exponentially in n . The model is illustrative and its value lies in the assumption it exposes rather than in any number it produces. It assumes errors accumulate independently and are never removed. The correction apparatus is exactly the violation of that assumption: a corrector comparing a copy against another exemplar can subtract error as well as add it, which is why long manuscript traditions do not simply dissolve. Where the assumption does hold — where a single exemplar is copied without collation — the exponential intuition is closer to right. The historical variable that matters is therefore not copying rate but access to independent witnesses.
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