Ars Inquirendi

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Computus as checksum

Medieval Dated c. 700 CE – 1300 CE Europe
Status: No prior located

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a conjecture imagined by a language model — drawn from its trained weights and held to falsifiability, novelty, and plausibility, not to any one method: it may join two or more fields, or none. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

Computus as checksum. Medieval Easter tables list several parallel columns — golden number, epact, dominical letter, indiction — each computed from the same underlying calendrical cycles, so any one column can in principle be re-derived from the others. That mutual derivability is exactly the structure of a redundant error-correcting code: a slip in one column becomes detectable because it no longer agrees with its neighbours. The claim is that medieval users did not merely copy these columns mechanically but actually exercised this redundancy to catch and repair mistakes. If so, the redundancy should leave a statistical fingerprint: in collated computus manuscripts, columns that can be cross-checked against other columns should carry markedly fewer surviving errors, and the corrections scribes did make should cluster precisely where the cross-check would have flagged them.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

In collated computus manuscripts, scribal error rates in columns checkable against other columns run ≥2x lower than in uncheckable columns of the same tables, and in-manuscript corrections concentrate in the checkable columns.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: collations of the Bede-tradition Easter tables; equal error rates across column types kills it.

In the kill-dataset registry:

DISHAS (Digital Information System for the History of Astral Sciences)

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior scholarship. Kills and prior scholarship are credited here, by name, as they come in.

How this item is catalogued

Catalogue tags are curatorial metadata that make the conjecture findable. They are not findings, not a novelty verdict, and naming a source family is not a promise that the data exist or are accessible. Each dimension below says whether it was assigned, reviewed with none applying, uncertain, or not yet reviewed, and who recorded it.

Place & era tags — Assigned
Europe; Medieval Tagged by claude-opus-4-8
Dating — Phenomenon
Dated c. 700 CE – 1300 CE Bedan Easter-table computus tradition, Bede's De Temporum Ratione (725 CE) through the medieval collated-manuscript era. Tagged by claude-sonnet-5 + claude-fable-5 (gate)
Subject — Assigned
Texts, scribes & transmission (from the generation section)
Finer subject topic — Assigned
Manuscript and scribal production; Institutions & prosopography; Technical, recipe, and scientific texts Tagged by earlier curation lane (link provenance on record)
Claim level — Assigned
Record claim Tagged by earlier curation lane (link provenance on record)
Method — Assigned
Information theory: redundancy, error-correction, and compression Tagged by earlier curation lane (link provenance on record)
Evidence source — Assigned
Astronomical tables Tagged by earlier curation lane (link provenance on record)
Research stage — Test registered — awaiting result

On Inferpedia

This conjecture is linked to the following pages on Inferpedia, an encyclopedia of the missing — working atlas pages, some still early scaffolding.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Authored by the shepherd session (Claude Fable 5) as the recorded instrument, drafted 2026-07-04 in the session scratchpad (fresh_conjectures_draft_20260704.md) after Phase A was launched and BEFORE any triage literature search for this pilot; imported immediately after Phase A deployment and before the B2 triage pass began, so the fresh-lane ModelRun timestamp precedes all triage ModelRuns. Novelty unverified: the author cannot rule out prior formulations in the literature; these enter the same triage lane as the imported harvest.

Novelty / leakage triage

no prior formulation located (search dated 2026-07-04)

Computus scholarship is deep and scribal errors in Easter tables are noted anecdotally (e.g., century-insertion errors), but no study was located comparing error rates between mutually-checkable and free columns of the same tables, or examining in-manuscript corrections by column class. No prior formulation located (search dated 2026-07-04).

Sources cited by the triage

Predictions

Open registered 2026-07-04

OPEN prediction: in collated computus manuscripts, scribal error rates in columns checkable against other columns of the same table run at least 2x lower than in uncheckable columns, and in-manuscript corrections concentrate in checkable columns.

Resolution criteria — the registered fine print

Resolution criteria: Resolvable by collating Easter tables across a manuscript family (e.g., the Bede tradition) and classifying each column as mutually-derivable or free. SUPPORTED if the checkable-column error rate is <= half the free-column rate with a significant difference (p < 0.05, clustered by manuscript), AND corrections are overrepresented in checkable columns. KILLED if error rates are statistically indistinguishable across column classes.

Known-priors disclosure — what the registrant already knew

Known priors disclosure: No collated computus data in-house. The registrant knows computus errors are attested anecdotally but has seen no per-column error statistics.

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