tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516189026477178777.post2401822642023556365..comments2024-03-27T22:32:02.739+01:00Comments on Beneath the Stains of Time: Murder Isn't Cricket (1946) by E. and M.A. RadfordTomCathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03415176301265218101noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516189026477178777.post-32546717372232841332023-03-28T21:51:43.860+02:002023-03-28T21:51:43.860+02:00Great review! My only note is... You have equal od...Great review! My only note is... You have equal odds at getting 2 million heads as you do getting 1 million heads and 1 million tails. In the laws of statistics, true randomness means that every permutation of results is equally likely as any other permutation of results. It's entirely reasonable.L. Stumpnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516189026477178777.post-56121384938468709922019-03-31T11:57:34.138+02:002019-03-31T11:57:34.138+02:00You haven't done your homework, JJ. The soluti...You haven't done your homework, JJ. The solution from <i>Thy Arm Alone</i> can be hard to swallow, especially when it was written, but that unlikely situation actually happened seven years later in 1954. Only difference in this real-life case is that the victim lived to tell the story. Look it up. <br /><br />So <i>Thy Arm Alone</i> is infinitely more likely to happen than heads turning up twenty million times in a row. TomCathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03415176301265218101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516189026477178777.post-72165386966168218102019-03-31T11:37:35.085+02:002019-03-31T11:37:35.085+02:00Oh, sure, but mathematically thatr's where a l...Oh, sure, but mathematically thatr's where a lot of statistical distributions come from: the fact that even though something is overwhelmingly <i>unlikely</i> it's still <i>possible</i>. But, sure, I appreciate that in a novel of detection we typically want to believe the chances of something coming off are better than 1 in several several several billion. Though I seem to recall your being a fan of Thy Arm Alone by John Russell Fearn, and the central conceit of that book is even less likely than that... :DJJ @ The Invisible Eventhttps://theinvisibleevent.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516189026477178777.post-63634125422816118652019-03-31T09:03:08.241+02:002019-03-31T09:03:08.241+02:00Purely theoretical and bad logic in a detective st...Purely theoretical and bad logic in a detective story. Once is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three is a pattern. When someone keeps getting heads or tails when flipping a coin, they're cheating. <br /><br />Anyway, I hope you'll get a lot sooner to this one, because I actually have no idea whether you would like it or not. You can go either way on this one. Like a coin toss. ;) TomCathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03415176301265218101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516189026477178777.post-25075039474007930092019-03-29T07:23:42.337+01:002019-03-29T07:23:42.337+01:00I saw Puzzle Doctor's review of this and thoug...I saw Puzzle Doctor's review of this and thought "Hmmm, that sounds like my kind of thing" -- and, despite your parallels with the early works of Ellery Queen, you convince me even more. Expect this to appear over at my place in...maybe four or five years.<br /><br />As to the "twenty million heads" thing...what's said in the book is perfectly logical. Every time you flip a coin, it <i>could</i> come down Heads, but typically such a run is interrupted by a Tails at some point simply because that is as likely. It's vanishingly rare that you get Heads, say, ten times in a row, but again absolutely possible. Twenty million is several orders of magnitude less likely, veering so damn close to impossible as to be almost indistinct, but the fact remains that there's even a miniscule chance it might happen and so mathematically that's absolutely fine by us!JJ @ The Invisible Eventhttps://theinvisibleevent.comnoreply@blogger.com