Frequency Analysis - Frequency Analysis in Fiction

Frequency Analysis in Fiction

Frequency analysis has been described in fiction. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold-Bug", and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tale "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" are examples of stories which describe the use of frequency analysis to attack simple substitution ciphers. The cipher in the Poe story is encrusted with several deception measures, but this is more a literary device than anything significant cryptographically.

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