Comparing strings from the back?

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Peter Otten <__peter__ at web.de> wrote:
> comparing every pair in a sample of 1000 8-char words
> taken from '/usr/share/dict/words'
>
> head
> 1: 477222 ************************************************************
> 2:  18870 **
> ...

Not understanding this. What are the statistics, and what (if it's not
obvious from the previous answer) do they prove?

ChrisA