Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 exptools; site ihlpg.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ihlpg!tainter
From: tainter@ihlpg.UUCP (Tainter)
Newsgroups: net.consumers
Subject: Re: Tylenol
Message-ID: <1713@ihlpg.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Mar-86 18:37:40 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlpg.1713
Posted: Mon Mar 17 18:37:40 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Mar-86 04:56:28 EST
References: <270@bu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 29

>>  Simple probability. Since they ARE all made at the same factory, the
>>odds on two bottles tainted at the factory  showing up a few blocks away from
>>each other, and so far nowhere else, are astronomical.
> I'm not sure I buy this reasoning. In other words they make two cartons of
> bottles and route one to (say) North Carolina and the next one on the line
> to Hawaii?
> It would seem to me very probable that if someone tampered with
> bottles from two different cartons in a row (say during a few minutes
> no one was watching) they would both end up in the same area (if not
> the same store.) Not a proof of anything, but I don't buy the opposite
> judgement on the probabilities as proving anything either here. (of
> course you probably need some facts to break this argument, but for
> now it seems to me one guess is as good as the other, and I doubt
> anyone is about to hand us any facts.)
> 	-Barry Shein, Boston University
You haven't considered the whole scenario:

Only five tainted bottles are made at the plant (Either together or maybe in
    two smaller sets, so that they end up cased together).
One case iwth tainted bottles is shipped to one major chain distributor,
    another to another major chain distributor.
Each distributor sends it's case to any store anywhere in the United States
    probably through three or four levels of distribution.
In this process both cases and all five bottles end up in two stores less
    than a mile apart.

    This is where probability kicks in and pipes up, "SAY WHAT??".
--j.a.tainter
Time is an addition, we can't live without.