Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site mmm.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!mmm!cipher From: cipher@mmm.UUCP (Andre Guirard) Newsgroups: net.startrek Subject: Re: Vulcan arithmetic Message-ID: <288@mmm.UUCP> Date: Wed, 6-Nov-85 19:34:56 EST Article-I.D.: mmm.288 Posted: Wed Nov 6 19:34:56 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 09:54:55 EST References: <1137@rayssd.UUCP> <298@utflis.UUCP> Reply-To: cipher@mmm.UUCP (Andre Guirard) Distribution: net Organization: 3M Company, St. Paul, Minn. Lines: 17 Keywords: seven tenths Summary: In article <298@utflis.UUCP> brown@utflis.UUCP (Susan Brown) writes: >> ... Spock computes their odds >>of success to be some_large_number.7 to 1. I want to know where >>the .7 came from. > >Jean Lorrah (author of The Vulcan Academy Murders) has Amanda, Spock's >mother, suggest in one of her earlier fanzine-published stories >that "I think they make those numbers up at least half the time." I think the real answer is that the authors of the Star Trek scripts don't know enough about statistics to realize that it's usually not possible to compute the odds exactly. In "The Trouble with Tribbles", Spock computes the number of tribbles in the grain storage compartment (it's some large number ending with three, I think) and then tells us how he computed it... obviously it is not possible to compute the exact number, but he pretends to do so. I would think a "real" Vulcan would have said something like, "Somewhere between 12,340,000 and 12,500,000".