<p>I always thoight that could happen in music. There are only so many notes and chords</p>
<p>But billions of combinations.</p>
<p>The Goldbug Variations by Richard Powers compares Bach’s inventiveness with only four notes with the many, many, many (infinite) combinations that DNA can make with only four bases.</p>
<p>Fascinating novel.</p>
<p>Grinne and mythmom are right.</p>
<p>The whole question is fundamentally flawed. There is no such thing as coincidental plagiarism. Plagiarism is by definition taking someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. </p>
<p>If you write a paragraph that is nearly identical to a paragraph that some stranger wrote, that is not “coincidental plagiarism,” that is “coincidental we-independently-wrote-the-same-thing.”</p>
<p>GrinNe,</p>
<p>I ask purely out of curiosity. It’s something that I’ve always wondered.</p>
<p>I can see what you mean: it’s very unlikely that two people will independently write the same thing.</p>
<p>My daughter had one teacher in high school who made the kids turn in every writing assignment to a plagiarism screening web site. I think it was called " turnitin". The site returned a value, as a percentage likelihood that the text was plagiarized. If I recall, the value was never zero and occasionally seemed high- though still acceptable.</p>
<p>With regard to DNA, the older I get the more I think people remind me of someone I already know. Perhaps the combinations are repeated on occasion!</p>