Paulson, the intellectually honest thing for you to do at this point is respond to my rigorously defined terms and presented arithmetic that I previously posted:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg77359.html On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 1:44 PM, George Paulson <[email protected] > wrote: > If we treat the flybys as a Poisson process with a mean waiting time > between successive flyby events of 40 years and define a simultaneous flyby > as successive flybys separated by less than one day, we get a mean waiting > time of approximately 585,000 years from simultaneous flyby to the next. > > > This still suggests much higher odds than the original naive calculation > odds, doesn't it? > > > > ------------------------------ > Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:41:11 -0600 > > Subject: Re: [Vo]:Russian meteor coincidence odds > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > You obviously misunderstand the Poisson process and/or my calculation. > > There is nothing about any specific date in it. > > > On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 12:22 PM, George Paulson < > [email protected]> wrote: > > James, > > Your calculation was of the odds of a simultaneous flyby occurring on > February 15th, 2013, that is, occurring on a specific date. The odds of it > occurring on another specific date, say tomorrow, March 1st, 2013, are also > as low as you calculated. > > The odds of it happening in general, that is on any day rather than on a > particular date, are much higher. > > If we're trying to make some reasonable judgments about possible causes, > it seems we should test our speculations against these latter odds, rather > than the former odds, unless there is something special about that > particular date, Feb. 15th, 2013, or some other reason or piece of > information that suggests we should pay attention to the odds of the flyby > occurring on that day, rather than any day. > > ------------------------------ > Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:30:52 -0600 > > Subject: Re: [Vo]:Russian meteor coincidence odds > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > If my counting units had been years then you'd be right to imply my degree > of error was wildly off the mark, but they weren't. If the two events had > occurred within the same hour instead of within the same day, my > calculation would have been an even greater "far cry" from the time base of > years but it is still reasonable to base the calculation on counting units > derived from the distance in time between the events. What if they had > occurred within the same minute? The same second? > > In fact, the two events occurred within 16 hours of each other, not 24 > hours. > > Otherwise, thanks for pursuing a less naive calculation but you failed to > show your work. "Taylor expansion" doesn't cut it. > > Please update it for 16 hours rather than 24 hours and show your work. By > work I mean something more specific than "taylor expasion" which is about > as vague as you can get. > > > > On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 2:36 AM, George Paulson < > [email protected]> wrote: > > 271.8*16,000 comes out to 4,348,800 days. 4,348,800/365 comes out to > 11,915 years. > > So like I said we can expect an event like this roughly every 10,000 years > or so. > > That's a far cry from the one in one billion odds or the one in one > million odds after discounting by a factor of a thousand, isn't it? > > > ------------------------------ > Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:04:34 -0600 > Subject: Re: [Vo]:Russian meteor coincidence odds > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > > You quote me incorrectly. My actual words were "less than one in a > million". I stated so because mine was a "naive calculation" that came up > with 1/1332250000 to which I then applied a "discount by a factor of a > thousand" precisely to address such arguments as yours. > > To normalize your calculation properly you have to multiply 271.8*16,000. > > Now, can you do that arithmetic for us to complete your "critique"? > > > On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 11:13 PM, George Paulson < > [email protected]> wrote: > > In an earlier message, James Bowery claimed that the odds of the Russian > meteor and asteroid DA14 passing Earth on the same day were "one in a > billion": > > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg76844.html > > "The odds of this coincidence are literally far less than one in a > million. The naive calculation is based on two like celestial events that > independently occur once in a hundred years occurring on the same day: > > 1/(365*100)^2 > = 1/1332250000 > > Note: that is one in a billion. Discount by a factor of a thousand for > whatever your argument is and you are still one in a million. > > This is not a coincidence." > > This is incorrect. It is more like the birthday problem, where we're looking > for the number of "years" that pass until two wandering asteroids have the > same "birthday". A birthday here is when they fly by the Earth. > > > > > We can expect the fly by of a DA14 type object every 40 years. If we > also assume that something like the Russian meteor passes by every 40 years, > this gives us a 16,000 day "year", and with a Taylor expansion you get a > > > > > 99% probability of there being a coincident "birthday" after 271.8 "years", > or roughly 10,000 of our years. > > So we can expect an event like this once every 10,000 years. > > > > >
