So here I am, innocently literature-reviewing something that is work-related. Spider Solitaire is the last thing on my mind. Someone has written an interesting Ph. D., titled “An Analytical Framework for Soft and Hard Data Fusion: A Dempster-Shafer Belief Theoretic Approach”. I’ve been there many years ago, so anyone who has something to show after three years of solid research has my respect. The author successfully navigates the first hurdle by not spelling Dempster with a ‘u’ (GIYF). After 16 pages it’s all looking good and the dude seems to know what he’s talking ab– rot13(JUNG GUR NPGHNY SYLVAT SHPX) JUST HAPPENED?!?!?!?
“Decision-level fusion: Here, each sensor makes a preliminary estimation of an entity’s identity in terms location, attributes, or any other DJDJDDJKDK.”
Yes, you read that right.
D-J-D-J-D-D-J-K-D-K.
All capitals.
Ten consonants in a row.
Don’t bother looking it up in Scrabble. Even if it happened to be legit, there are not enough D’s J’s K’s and blanks in the bag to spell that word without violating the laws of physics.
I mean, this word beats “covfefe” hands down. At least the latter has only seven letters and some of them are vowels. I could understand ASDFASDSDF if somebody was too lazy to type “Lorem Ipsum” as place-holder text. But D and J/K are separated by three letters on a standard keyboard last time I checked, so button-mashing doesn’t seem a very plausible explanation of DJDJDDJKDK.
I did what any self-respecting research scientist would do: I googled the thing. Nothing, zilch, nada, zippo, duck’s egg. Buckleys plus Buckleys squared. Worse-than-Anton-Smirnov-getting-smashed-with-the-white-pieces-against-Duda-in-26-moves. With nothing to go on, it looks like I have to invent my own definition.
Let us say that a DJDJDDJKDK is a special cheevo that occurs whenever you deal ten cards from the stock, such that the first card is any diamond, the second card is any Jack, followed by another Diamond, another Jack and so on. That’s a total of five diamonds, three Jacks and two Kings. Probably a lousy deal unless some of the diamonds happen to be Queens or Tens, or you have strong chances of completing a suit of Diamonds.
Assuming cards are drawn with replacement it’s easy to compute the probability of a DJDJDDJKDK. Every diamond occurs with probability 1/4 and every Jack or King occurs with probability 1/13. The overall probability is obtained by multiplying (1/4)^5 * (1/13)^5. Of course, the cards are not drawn with replacement but it’s a reasonable approximation to say the chances of achieving DJDJDDJKDK are not exactly great. We can improve our chances a bit by allowing any permutation of DJDJDDJKDK. Also, the Jack (King) of diamonds can count as a J(K) or a D. But If I were the author of a Ph. D. mentioning the words “decision-level fusion” I wouldn’t be betting my Ph. D. to a brick on the elusive DJDJDDJKDK given those odds. The above image is a randomly generated 4-suit hand, and clearly, we are not even close to a DJDJDDJKDK. We only need one “bad card” i.e. not a Jack, King or Diamond to disprove a set of ten cards achieves DJDJDDJKDK. But if it ever does happen in my Spider Solitaire career, I would definitely let the whole world know 😊
Well, that’s enough digression for today. How would you explain someone choosing DJDJDDJKDK as a Ph. D topic? And more importantly, how would you define DJDJDDJKDK?
Edifying Thoughts of a Spider Solitaire Addict 
I’ll have a go at an explanation. The basic category is the “key mash” thing, like ASDFASDFASDF. The framework we want is touch typing on a standard keyboard. In that system, the “home keys” are ASDF for the left hand and JKL; for the right. What’s more every key in the standard alphabet is assigned to one of those fingers. Here’s a diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing#/media/File:FingerHandPosUSA.gif.
“ASDFASDF” is one mash but another is “FJFJFJFJFJ”, where someone produces “garbage” by alternating the home keys for the two hands. The offending phrase here in OP’s case is a variant of “FJFJF…” with just a few deviations. Note that only 3 distinct letters are used among the 10 characters — extremely unlikely due to chance alone. Also note that those letters are 3 of the 4 of “touch type home keys for index and middle fingers”.
I’ll presume a certain few deviations meets another psychological goal, which is “don’t do the expected thing exactly, but make it a little different”.
So, as for the deviations:
It does alternate the fingers, which is part of the “FJFJFJF” pattern. Exceptions are in two spots, the DD and the JK right after it. Each one there got an extra letter before going back to the alternation.
Second, instead of “F” for the left hand we have “D”. This could be because the middle finger is longer than the index, making “D” easier to reach in some sense than “F”. With the other hand “K” is right next to “J” on the home row for the right hand (and is also a longer finger).
Another possible factor that might lead us to “D” instead of “F” has to do with capitals. On a keyboard, to make a capital letter there is a choice of which “shift” key to use, each the responsibility of the nearest little finger. In classic touch typing systems you are always supposed to use the shift key on the hand opposite the one where you’re typing the letter. The advantage of this is glaring if you’re trying to type Q, A, or Z but makes sense overall in trying to shift responsibilities back and forth between the two hands when possible. However, I (and I think many others) give this up sometimes because in modern language (in marked contrast to the 1940s) capitalized things like CAPTCHA occur a lot. Going back and forth between the two shift keys 4 times is just too tedious. Instead, we just use a single shift key (for me it’s the left), hold it down, and then make it do for all the letters. Now, in case an “A” is required, we have to shift the left hand over a spot, which leaves QAZ the responsibility of the ring finger, and in general there is a slight tugging so that left index finger finds itself over “D” sometimes instead of over “F”. And the offending DJDJDDJKDK case is all-caps so we are in exactly the sort of situation where the shift key is being held down and that index finger is being tugged over towards the D.
Admittedly there are many post hoc rules being applied here, and these same basic principles could result in hundreds of things similar to DJDJDDJKDK — but I do think it is also offering significant constraints over far larger sets if keys were being chosen at random.
Miscellaneous: I once typed “asdf” into something, and got a research question back, “We noticed you typed ‘asdf’ and would like your explanation on why you typed that”.
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This was on Final Jeopardy just last week.
(The) Department (of) Justice Don’t Justify Dirty Deals, Just Keep Doing Korrectly
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Master Chi-Yuen and Esteemed Scholar Bart and any and all others, I am ready to head out on a vacation from my retirement.
I will rejoin the festivities here in Sept. Until then, be safe, be silly.
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