Is this the world’s ultimate swear word? Mathematician uses algorithm to create new offensive term

A mathematician has come up with a brand new swear word based on a list of 186 offensive terms — and she said it’s “the world’s ultimate swear word.”

Sophie Maclean, a student at Kings College London, found that “banger” is the ultimate offensive term, or “ber” for short.

The researcher entered a list from popular ‘swear words’ to a computer model, which showed that the highest word starts with the letter ‘b’, has four letters and ends with ‘-er’.

Mclean found that when no input was given, the model made up words like ‘thiswhat’.

Maclean told BBC Science Focus“I don’t think either is as satisfying as a ‘f*ck’ when you stubbed your toe, or a ‘sh*t’ when you realize you forgot your parents’ birthday. But they both feel they can be very good insults to people.”

In this work, the mathematician used a Markov chain, a model that describes a sequence of possible events where the probability of each event depends only on the state reached in the previous event.’

This means that results are created based on previous input, which is what Mclean did in the study.

She gave the model a list of English swear words compiled from Ofcom, who commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct research to help them understand public attitudes towards offensive language on TV and radio.

Mclean manually searched the list and narrowed it down to 45 of the most offensive words based on audience attitudes.

The list was fed into the algorithm, which landed on specific inputs that she then used to create the new swear word.

The researcher fed a list of 186 offensive terms into a computer model, which revealed that the very highest word begins with the letter “b,” has four letters, and ends in “-er” (stock).

Some frown upon swearing, but Mclean told the BBC that science has found evidence that shouting out “bad words” can reduce pain, and other studies have shown that using such words is a sign of intelligence.

Researchers at Keele University’s School of Psychology find that swearing can have a “pain-relieving effect.”

The team believes that swearing triggers our natural “fight-or-flight” response.

Volunteers submerged their hands in a tub of ice water for as long as they could while repeating their taboo word of choice.

Researchers found that the volunteers were able to keep their hands submerged in the ice water for longer when repeating the swear word, linking swearing to an increase in pain tolerance.

While numerous studies find benefits of using foul language, some find contraindications for such findings.

Profanity is also associated with honesty and creativity, as people choose powerful words to express their emotions.

This activates an area of ​​the right hemisphere known as the “creative brain.”

Timothy Jay, professor emeritus of psychology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who has studied swearing for more than 40 years, told CNN: “The benefits of swearing are many.”

“The benefits of swearing have only emerged in the last two decades, as a result of much research on the brain and emotion, along with much better technology to study brain anatomy.”

There has been a myth that such language is the “vocabulary poverty,” but in a 2015 study, Jay put this idea to rest.

He and his team also, taboo words positively correlated with the Big Five personality traits of neuroticism and openness and negatively associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Neuroticism and openness have also been found to correlate with honesty, suggesting that those who swear may also be the most honest.