the macs department colloquium secret codes in the bible: a tale of math, science, statistics and...
TRANSCRIPT
The MACS Department Colloquium Secret Codes in the Bible:
A Tale of Math, Science, Statistics and Psychic Ability
Michael Drosnin’s 1997 book
“The biggest news of the millenium – maybe of all human history even”
–The Baltimore Sun
Equal Letter Skips (ELS)
• Start at the first letter of the first book of the Torah (the first five books of the bible) in Hebrew. It is the Hebrew equivalent of “T”
• Skip 49 letters (an important number in Judaism) to the 50th letter “O”. Skip another 49 to “R” and then again to “H”
• It spells the Hebrew word for Torah
ELS
• Taking the text of the bible without spaces or punctuation, starting from any letter, and choosing any skip length (positive or negative) , the resulting word or message is called an Equal Letter Skip or ELS.
• First explored by 13th-century Spanish Rabbi Bachya ben Asher. Became popular with advent of computers.
ELSs Appearing together
• Visualize by imagining writing the text in lines of a given length. Verticals and diagonals are ELSs.
• ELSs that appear in a small window together in this fashion are viewed as being connected to each other
ELSs Appearing Together(e.g. from King James’s Genesis)
• Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg, 1994, peer reviewed in Statistical Science, appeared to show bible codes predicted events that later came to pass.
• Drosnin, American reporter in Middle East, began looking for these codes. Found numerous predictions including…
• Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, as predicted by Drosnin
Should we take this as evidence that there are predictions of future events encoded in the
bible?
• How to we assess evidence in favor of a hypothesis?
A Simple Example• If I claimed to be a psychic, how would you
assess my claim?• Ask me to predict the result of a coin flip.• Would you be convinced if I got 2 out of 3
right?• How about 99 out of 100?
The First Principle of Hypothesis Testing
• To measure how well your data supports a hypothesis ask “Suppose the hypothesis weren’t true, how likely would I be to see data like yours?”
• If it is very unlikely, since you did see your data, the supposition must be wrong, so this supports this hypothesis.
Gary Larson Cartoon
Chances of guessing right
• If I flip one coin• I could guess it right (R) or wrong (W), and
both are equally likely so
None right 1/2
One right 1/2
Chances of guessing right
• If I flip two coins• Four possibilities RR, RW, WR, WW, all equally
likely• One has me right twice, two have me right
once, one has me right no times
None right 1/4
One right 1/2
Two right 1/4
Chances of guessing right
• If I flip three coins• Now there are eight possibilities
WWW WWR WRW RWW RRW RWR WRR RRR
0 right 1/8
1 right 3/8
2 right 3/8
3 right 1/8
There is a pattern!
11/2 1/2
1/4 1/2 1/41/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
The pattern
11/2 1/2
1/4 1/2 1/41/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
The pattern
11/2 1/2
1/4 1/2 1/41/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
The pattern
11/2 1/2
1/4 1/2 1/41/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
Each number is the average of the two above it.
Why is that?
• Suppose you have 16 people each guess four coin flips.
• Stop after 3 flips and see how they are doing• We figured before…
On the first three flips2 of them will get none right
6 of the will get one right
6 of them will get two right
2 of them will get three right
On the next flip, half of each are right
0 or 1 right
1 or 2 right
2 or 3 right
3 or 4 right
1/16 + 3/16 =4/16 get 1 right0 or 1 right
1 or 2 right
2 or 3 right
3 or 4 right
So..
Chance of 1 right out of 4 is ½ times chance of 0 right out of 3
+ ½ times chance of 1 right out of 3
or ½ times 1/8 + ½ times 3/8
or the average of 1/8 and 3/8
or 4/16
We can fill in the triangle now1
1/2 1/2
1/4 2/4 1/4
1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
We can fill in the triangle now1
1/2 1/2
1/4 2/4 1/4
1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
1/16
We can fill in the triangle now1
1/2 1/2
1/4 2/4 1/4
1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
1/16 3/16
We can fill in the triangle now1
1/2 1/2
1/4 2/4 1/4
1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
1/16 3/16 3/16
We can fill in the triangle now1
1/2 1/2
1/4 2/4 1/4
1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
1/16 3/16 6/16 6/16
And if we keep going…1
1/2 1/2
1/4 2/4 1/4
1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8
1/16 3/16 6/16 6/16 6/16
…221 slides laterNumber Right Percent
0 0.001%
1 0.013%
2 0.104%
3 0.519%
4 1.816%
5 4.721%
6 9.442%
7 14.838%
8 18.547%
9 18.547%
10 14.838%
11 9.442%
12 4.721%
13 1.816%
14 0.519%
15 0.104%
16 0.013%
17 0.001%
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 170.000%
2.000%
4.000%
6.000%
8.000%
10.000%
12.000%
14.000%
16.000%
18.000%
20.000%
Percentage of All Guessers