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From Chapter Three: Piercing the Veil
If you can determine how unlikely it is that a given pattern can arise by chance,
you have your answer as to how likely it is that the structure is deliberate.
Here is a simple example: Suppose you find a quarter lying on the street. Without
a moment's thought, you assume that someone dropped it accidentally--that it's there
"by chance." You assume this because it's so commonplace an occurrence.
After all, consider the alternative: that someone placed it there deliberately. Though
it's theoretically possible, your own personal experience tells you that it's pretty
unlikely. How many times in your life have you taken a coin, set it down just so
on the pavement, and walked away? On the other hand, how many times have you fumbled
a coin and dropped it accidentally--and noticed that you did? There were probably
other times when you didn't notice. So, based on many prior samples, you guess that
the odds are very low that the quarter reflects deliberate intent. It's far more
likely an accident.
Now, what if you found three quarters, all close to one another? Still, it seems
more likely that someone dropped a cluster of coins by accident, than that they put
them there. (Maybe you feel it's a close call.) Part of this calculation (which is
less certain than the prior one) involves something else, too: a reasonable guess
as to people's reasons for doing things. It's hard to think of a good reason for
someone to put three quarters on the ground deliberately.
Let's take it one step further. Suppose you again find three quarters, but this
time they are all touching one another, forming a triangular arrangement. Was this
deliberate, or by chance? Chance certainly can't be ruled out, but it seems "suspicious."
It's now likely that you'll change your mind and think that someone did it "on
purpose"--even though the purpose is hard to imagine.
Finally, what if you find ten quarters stacked neatly one on top of another?
Though once again you can't prove it didn't "just happen," the odds against
it will seem so great ("it's so odd," you'll think) that you'll be certain
the stack was placed there for some unknown reason.
....There is one other point we should highlight. That an event didn't happen
by chance does not always mean that it was deliberate. Another possibility is some
kind of impersonal mechanical order. The fact that there are so many "e's"
in this paragraph was not deliberate on my part: it simply reflects the "impersonal"
spelling rules of English. There are 63 e's out of 446 letters (a-z), a frequency
of about 15%. The expected frequency of the letter e in modern English is around
13%. The 2% "deviation" is well within the range expected by chance. But
how about this paragraph:
"Upon this basis I am going to show you how a bunch of bright young folks
did find a champion; a man with boys and girls of his own; a man of so dominating
and happy individuality that Youth is drawn to him as is a fly to a sugar bowl. It
is a story about a small town. It is not a gossipy yarn; nor is it a dry monotonous
account, full of such customary 'fill-ins' as 'romantic moonlight casting murky shadows
down a long, winding country road.'"
There is not a single "e" in this passage. The odds that this happened
"by chance" are very slight indeed. Try composing your own paragraph of
the same length, without e's, making comparably good sense and in a decent style.
You'll see that it requires a tremendous amount of effort.
Now, what if we discovered that this paragraph was taken from a 267-page novel
without a single e in it? What are the odds that such a thing "just happened?"
In fact, we can confirm our hypothesis that this almost certainly is deliberate:
The paragraph comes from a book entitled, Gadsby, A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without
Using the Letter E, published in 1939 by Ernest Vincent Wright.
What if the above paragraph had a few e's, say 0.01%? How confident would you
be that it was deliberate? What about if it had 2%? Or 7%? Such are the questions
that must be asked when you examine a text containing strange statistical patterns--and
the authorship is in dispute.
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