At Northwestern University, items such as CDs and 25-page writing samples get dumped into a bin.

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Instead, it resulted in more complex writing samples than they were able to produce while not entranced.

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What about work or writing samples?

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Computer analysis is less subjective, and measures the characteristics of individual pixels (the dots from which images are built up) taken from scanned samples of writing.

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To her surprise, the editor invited the 37-year-old housewife in for a meeting, and after reading samples of her writing later, gave her a job.

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