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On 25-Jul-05 Bernard Cleyet wrote, regarding the remarkable(?) gamma ray
burster lacuna in June and July:
BYes it looks good. However, as one author wrote (paraphrased)
those who
do Chi by eye deserve what they get.
_______________________________________________
I am not a statistician either, Bernard, and I don't know where you
"went
wrong", except, perhaps, by starting the calculation in the first place.
We all know that the lacuna is an *a priori* improbable event, but so is
winning the lottery.
My purpose was to exemplify the futility of doing *a priori* calculation
on *a posteriori* events. As I said, I know we all do it, and since this
one happened to my son, I knew about it during the scary period when the
Swift team, understandably, worried about the health of their
instrument.
Taking such a calculation seriously could lead only to one's
entertaining
hypotheses like "The Universe is trying to tell us something" and other
scientifically heretical ideas. It is equivalent to reestablishment of a
geocentric cosmology.
Science, whether we like it or not, is a faith-based culture. If atheism
is not quite compulsory for a scientist, there is tacit agreement
that we
will accept no scientific hypothesis that invokes gods as mechanism*. We
do not believe in miracles, and the justification for our faith lies in
probability calculations based upon large experiential data bases which
demonstrate time after time that miracles are based upon myopia, the
failure to observe a sufficiently large data base. This is particularly
dramatic when one is in the midst of a heat wave, as I know some of you
are. As hot as it is, and as little as it helps to know it, your weather
is not unprecedented.
Leigh
*"deus ex machina"