Greek search reliability

[pespicer]

When I search the book of Romans in the BGM version for ἀποθνῄσκω by itself (.ἀποθνῄσκω), BW returns 23 hits. When I search the same for θάνατος by itself (.θάνατος), BW returns 22 hits. And when I search the same for νεκρός by itself (.νεκρός), BW returns 16 hits. So, the individual hits for ἀποθνῄσκω, θάνατος, and νεκρός add up to 61 total hits. But when I search for ἀποθνῄσκω, θάνατος, and νεκρός together as an OR search (/ἀποθνῄσκω θάνατος νεκρός), BW reports, both at the bottom of the Search Window and in the Stats tab, a total of 68 hits--seven more than when these three words are searched on individually. The over reporting of seven hits by the combined search appears to result from an over-reporting of one occurrence in Rom 6:4, four occurrences in 6:9, one occurrence in 7:10, and one occurrence in 14:9. Are others having this same sort of problem with combined searches? Does anyone know why it occurs or how to get around it (apart from authenticating with individual searches)? Am I simply missing something or doing something wrong?

Thank you,
Patrick

[J Kendall]

Off the top of my head, I can't remember why this happens. I think there may be something in the forum on this from decades ago. Anyway, you'll get the correct result from the command line using: ('αποθνησκω)/('θανατος)/('νεκρος)

The other alternative is to enter /αποθνησκω θανατος νεκρος on the command line, then click Tools > Graphical Search Engine and run the GSE search.

Interestingly, both methods give the correct result on the status bar, but only the GSE search produces the correct result on the stats tab. The GSE is always the way to go if you want to be sure of your results.

Hope this helps,

John

[J Kendall]

I've just remembered why this happens. See the help file Section 19 Analysis Window - The Search Statistics Tab and look under Interpreting the Status Area Search Statistics.

As it says, in the Options Window, go to Command Line Search Options and turn off the "Compute Search Window hits by permutation" flag.

John

[pespicer]

John, thank you so much for such a timely and informative response. Very much appreciated.

Thanks again,
Patrick

[KORS]

It is not uncommon for search results to differ when searching for individual words versus combined searches. In the case you described, it is possible that the combined search is capturing additional occurrences of the searched words that were missed in the individual searches. One way to check this would be to examine the context of the verses where the combined search is reporting additional hits. It may be helpful to use a tool such as a concordance or lexicon to examine the usage of the words in those contexts.

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