No, you got it wrong again. To use your dice analogy, it is as if someone went ahead and rolled the dice 6*14,720 times and they yielded 14,720 hits. But along comes a skeptic who says that all of those hits were misreads. The chance of those misreads is 1/3 (If you want to establish that the chance is higher, then make the case for it -- but it has never happened, ever before, in the history of science). So in order for all those 14,720 hits to be errors, it would be (1/3)^14720, which is the figure that puts you off by 5000 orders of magnitude.
When you make insipid arguments based on unjustifiable assumptions, you should at least try to get the math right. ***You are the one with insipid arguments and your math is wrong. By thousands of orders of magnitude. Also, you're engaging in debunking and sneering, which are against the rules. You haven't got anything right. On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 2:34 PM, Joshua Cude <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:22 PM, Kevin O'Malley <[email protected]>wrote: > >> What it represents is the probability that ALL of the replications were >> the result of error. It is exceedingly small. >> > > No. That would be the result if there were no negative results in between. > If you throw N dice, the chance they all come up 6 is (1/6)^N. > > But if you throw 6N dice, on average N will come up 6. > > So, if the chance is 1/3 that you get a false positive excess heat, and > 1/3 of cold fusion experiments show heat, then they could all be by chance, > no matter how big N is. > > When you make insipid arguments based on unjustifiable assumptions, you > should at least try to get the math right. > > > >> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:23 PM, Joshua Cude <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:56 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>wrote: >>> >>>> Kevin O'Malley <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> ***We can proceed with the same probability math I used upthread. If >>>>> one considers it to be 1/3 chance of generating a false-positive excess >>>>> heat event, then you take that 1/3 to the power of how many replications >>>>> are on record. >>>>> >>>> >>>> That is a form of Bayesian analysis, I think. >>>> >>>> >>> No it's not. It's just ordinary probability theory, and it's not even >>> right. That calculation gives the probability of getting N *consecutive* >>> replications. The probability of rolling 6 on an ordinary die is 1/6, but >>> it's easy to get N sixes (on average) just by throwing the die 6N times. >>> >>> It is the need for these sorts of arguments and Bayesian analysis that >>> emphasizes the absence of a single experiment that will give an expected >>> result. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >
