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From: Jasper
Date: 10/19/01
Time: 11:31:54 AM
Don't read this until you have taken the test in the previous Figuring the Odds post….
For years I have been searching for a way to get people to understand the significance of how probability figures into the evidence associate with Mark Fuhrman and the movies. I think I've got it. Got to http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/~paul/cgi-bin/zener.cgi and take the test.
My score on this test was 7.5. A chance score is five. The key thing to understand here is that there is always a small plus or minus deviation in the real world that you can expect from the theoretical 5 and my 7.5 score falls within that range. In other words, you can expect better than chance results and less than chance results at any given time but the range of normal deviation either way is very small. For my score to mean any thing in this test it would have to be 9 or better.
The difference between 7.5 and 9 may seem small, but it isn't. It's HUGE. And every point above that grows like compound interest. The answer to the test in Figuring the Odds/Take this Test is e, 22 billion. --Jasper