Introduction

This article is all about Steem White Paper. If you are a Steemer and you don't know what it is - shame on you! You can find it here.

If English is not your native language (like myself) you may have some big problems with understanding it. But don't worry - after this article you will know why it's like that.

As always with my statistics - you can see interactive graphs on infogr.am.

Readability

Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. The readability of text depends on its content - the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax. There are many tests to determinate text readability and most popular of them are used in this article:

• Flesch Reading Ease - It was developed under contract to the U.S. Navy in 1975 by J. Peter Kincaid and his team. The U.S. Department of Defense uses the Reading Ease test as the standard test of readability for its documents and forms. Florida requires that life insurance policies have a Flesch Reading Ease score of 45 or greater. It's the only test where higher score (from 0 to 100) represents text easier to read.
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level - It was first used by the U.S. Navy for assessing the difficulty of technical manuals in 1978. The Army uses it for assessing the difficulty of technical manuals. The commonwealth of Pennsylvania uses Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level for scoring automobile insurance policies to ensure their texts are no higher than a ninth grade level of reading difficulty. Many other U.S. states also use it to score other legal documents such as business policies and financial forms.
• Gunning Fog Index - The test was developed by Robert Gunning, an American businessman, in 1952. It measures the readability of English writing and estimates the years of formal education needed to understand the text on a first reading.
• SMOG Index - It was developed by G. Harry McLaughlin as a more accurate and more easily calculated substitute for the Gunning fog index and published in 1969. SMOG is a measure of readability that estimates the years of education needed to understand a piece of writing. It's the acronym derived from Simple Measure of Gobbledygook. SMOG is widely used for checking consumer-orientated healthcare material.
• Coleman-Liau Index - It was designed by Meri Coleman and T. L. Liau in 1975 to gauge the understandability of a text. The Coleman-Liau Index usually gives a lower grade value than any of the Kincaid, ARI and Flesch values when applied to technical documents.
• Automated Readability Index - From 1975 it's widely used on all types of texts.

Preparing the data

Steem White Paper was divided into parts:

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Ways to Contribute [without Steem Dollars (SMD) and Subjective Contributions]
• Steem Dollars (SMD) [part of Ways to Contribute]
• Subjective Contributions [part of Ways to Contribute]
• Consensus Algorithm
• Eliminating Transaction Fees
• Performance and Scalability
• Allocation & Supply
• The Power of Steem
• Conclusion

Text was copied without chapter names, other titles, graphs annotations and of course page numbers. Then all line breaks were deleted and text become one giant section. Every part and whole Steem White Paper was pasted into online tests which measure text readability.

Online tests used in this article:

• Approsto
• CheckText
• DairyScience (600 words limit)
• FixText
• JoesWebTools
• Online-Utility
• ReadabilityFormulas (at least 100 words)
• ReadabilityScore
• WebpageFX

There were some differences in numbers between sites so all scores in one type of test were averaged. Then scores from all tests (without Flesch Reading Ease) were also averaged and that's the way we found out how complicated is every part of White Paper.

I did the same steps with whole document Steem White Paper.

Parts of Steem White Paper

Abstract

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Introduction

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Ways to Contribute

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Steem Dollars (SMD)

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Subjective Contributions

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Consensus Algorithm

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Eliminating Transaction Fees

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Performance and Scalability

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Allocation & Supply

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The Power of Steem

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Conclusion

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Whole Steem White Paper

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Average scores in parts of Steem White Paper

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Tests compare in Whole Steem White Paper

Readability of Steem White Paper

	Readability	U.S. education level	Understanding (age)
Abstract	Very Confusing	College graduate	23-24 years
Introduction	Difficult	College freshman	18-19 years
Ways to Contribute	Fairly Difficult	High school sophomore	15-16 years
Steem Dollars (SMD)	Difficult	High school junior	16-17 years
Subjective Contributions	Difficult	High school senior	17-18 years
Consensus Algorithm	Difficult	High school senior	17-18 years
Eliminating Transaction Fees	Fairly Difficult	High school junior	16-17 years
Performance and Scalability	Difficult	High school sophomore	15-16 years
Allocation & Supply	Fairly Difficult	High school junior	16-17 years
The Power of Steem	Difficult	High school junior	16-17 years
Conclusion	Difficult	College sophomore	19-20 years
Whole WHITE PAPER	Difficult	High school senior	17-18 years

Conclusion

Looking at Whole Steem White Paper - it should be readable for every high school senior in the United States. The problem starts when we look at parts of document. The "worst" parts are Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion - two of them are right at the start. It's the first contact with Steem White Paper and people could feel a little too overwhelmed with the complication of the text.

Those data is little confusing because Flesch Reading Ease shows that the text is more complicated comparing to grade level. Table from Wikipedia:

Steem White Paper has average Ease at 48,10 - and it clearly shows "college" which is "difficult to read". If this document is hard for citizens of the United States how a foreigner could be smart in English enough to understand Steem White Paper?

And I leave you with this...