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From: ins_akaa@jhunix.UUCP (Kenneth Adam Arromdee)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: Vulcan arithmetic
Message-ID: <1187@jhunix.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Nov-85 01:33:31 EST
Article-I.D.: jhunix.1187
Posted: Thu Nov 14 01:33:31 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Nov-85 20:34:30 EST
References: <1137@rayssd.UUCP> <298@utflis.UUCP> <288@mmm.UUCP>
Reply-To: ins_akaa@jhunix.ARPA (Kenneth Adam Arromdee)
Distribution: net
Organization: Johns Hopkins Univ. Computing Ctr.
Lines: 27

In article <288@mmm.UUCP> cipher@mmm.UUCP (Andre Guirard) writes:
>In article <298@utflis.UUCP> brown@utflis.UUCP (Susan Brown) writes:
>>>					... Spock computes their odds
>>>of success to be some_large_number.7 to 1.  I want to know where
>>>the .7 came from.
>I think the real answer is that the authors of the Star Trek scripts
>don't know enough about statistics to realize that it's usually not
>possible to compute the odds exactly.  In "The Trouble with Tribbles",
>Spock computes the number of tribbles in the grain storage compartment
>(it's some large number ending with three, I think) and then tells us
>how he computed it... obviously it is not possible to compute the exact
>number, but he pretends to do so.  I would think a "real" Vulcan would
>have said something like, "Somewhere between 12,340,000 and 12,500,000".

It doesn't end in 3 and in fact is a power of 11. Spock claims that it
allows for the volume of the storage compartment, etc... but it doesn't.  
(Interestingly, the James Blish novelization includes a different 
number, which presumably does allow for it.)
-- 
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Kenneth Arromdee
BITNET: G46I4701 at JHUVM and INS_AKAA at JHUVMS
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