http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=975770
Analysing compressed data leads to impressive results in
linguistics
ZIPPING, as any computer buff knows, enables you to compress a
file so that it can be stored efficiently, or sent quickly over
the Internet. But Emanuele Caglioti and his colleagues at the
University of Rome-La Sapienza have found a more esoteric use for
it. Using zipped files, they can identify the authors of
documents and reconstruct the family trees of languages.