Relative frequencies of letters in the English language.
“Herbert S. Zim, in his classic introductory cryptography text ‘Codes and Secret Writing’, gives the English letter frequency sequence as “ETAON RISHD LFCMU GYPWB VKXJQ Z”
(via Wikipedia)
I think everyone knows that ‘E’ is the most common letter in the English language, but I didn’t realise that ‘T’ was the second, and I had no idea that ‘N’ was so common either.
On the flip-side, I would have guessed ‘M’, ‘P’ and ‘B’ as being a lot more popular than they are. I probably would have overestimated the frequency of ‘S’ as well.
You know what I’ve just regretted not doing? I should have listed what I thought would be the right order of frequency first and then compared them.
I think I might be obsessed with this Hangman game on my phone.
Notes