Extended Comment on Language Trees and Zipping

TL;DR

This paper critiques a non-physics related publication in Physical Review Letters, demonstrating its inferior performance and lack of novelty, and argues for stricter publication relevance standards.

Contribution

It provides an experimental comparison showing the technique's poor performance and reviews literature to highlight the lack of novelty in the original Letter.

Findings

The technique is 3 times worse than a baseline.

It is 17 times slower than the baseline.

The ideas are not novel according to literature review.

Abstract

This is the extended version of a Comment submitted to Physical Review Letters. I first point out the inappropriateness of publishing a Letter unrelated to physics. Next, I give experimental results showing that the technique used in the Letter is 3 times worse and 17 times slower than a simple baseline. And finally, I review the literature, showing that the ideas of the Letter are not novel. I conclude by suggesting that Physical Review Letters should not publish Letters unrelated to physics.