Letters from the Front John Pezaris, Pasadena, California, 31 January 2000. YUP I have a friend, Michael Blair, known to most as Ziggy, who would, on occasion, and for reasons which no one has understood, sometimes answer his office phone at MIT with, "yup," and continue to use "yup" in response to every question or statement. Typical conversations when he was in this amusing state might run as: (ring, ring) zig: Yup. pz: Zig! It's pz. zig: Yup. pz: What up? zig: Yup. pz: Wanna play some squash this afternoon? zig: Yup. pz: How's 4 o'clock sound? zig: Yup. pz: Should I come by your office? zig: Yup. pz: And we'll play at DuPont gym as usual? zig: Yup. pz: Do you want to make a reservation or should I? zig: Yup. pz: Cool. See ya! zig: Yup. (click) Whether intentional or no, his uniform reply which carried identical inflection from utterance to utterance, suggested an interesting observation: conversations carry astonishingly large amounts of redundant information, to the point where one side can be entirely eliminated without seriously affecting the fidelity of the delivered message. Notice the slight ambiguity in his reply to the last question: with the additional meta-information that his replies themselves contain only the information that the message had been received, I could disambiguate his reply and conclude that I should call to make the reservation (it was as if I hadn't asked the question in the first place). Comments, anyone? - pz. Next Letter, Previous Letter, Send a Reply, Start Again Copyright 2000, J. S. Pezaris, All Rights Reserved.