I meant to say:
> Robert Duncan moving from Missouri to Texas A&M could go either way, no? >> > > He told me, "this will be good news for cold fusion." I guess that means > he is hoping to spread the . . . > MEANT: I guess that means he is hoping to spread the Gospel of St. Martin even unto the plains of Texas. I still would like to know where the heck how Blaze Spinnaker came up with these oddly precise numbers such as: "STMicro patent (Increased about 4.5%)" About 4.5%? Not 5.0% or precisely 3.8%? What is the basis for this? Here's a quote from Darrell Huff's book, "How to Lie with Statistics" (1954), p. 106: For a spurious air of precision that will lend all kinds of weight to the most disreputable statistic, consider the decimal. Ask a hundred citizens how many hours they slept last night. Come out with a total of, say, 783.1. Any such data are far from precise to begin with. Most people will miss their gas by 15 minutes or more, and there is no assurance that the errors will balance out. We all know someone who will recall five sleepless minutes as half a night of tossing insomnia. But go ahead, do your arithmetic, and announced that people sleep in average of 7.831 hours a night. You will sound as if you know precisely what you are talking about. If you had been so foolish as to declare only that people sleep 7.8 (or "almost 8") hours a night there would've been nothing striking about it. It would have sounded like what it was, a poor approximation and no more instructive than almost anybody's guess. - Jed
