spin

Yawn,Joe.

My first response to it points to your problems. You are inventing them. You are misrepresenting the spread of text datings, so as to make it look more encouraging for a 1st c.CE locus. You tarted up the 1997 calibration curve correction as though it were an original error to have used the curve that was originally used.

You have not improved with this little one step that you've been carrying on. You can't answer simple questions such as how Stuiver's 1998 article impacts on the dating of 1QpHab. You're not serious, Joe. Can I be any plainer?


spin

John Deere

Spin:

You seem spun out.

I am perfectly happy to respond to any errors in reasoning that you are able to point out in the article but I cannot mind read. I'll ask again:

Where is the error?

If you are unable to produce one admit it. Child-like comments such as I "tarted up" the analysis do not progress the discussion, do they Spin?

Joe

spin

Deere John,

You must realise that I've heard all the inventive attempts that a tired brain can come up with on the name. So I pay back tit for tat.

Rubbish. You didn't respond to my initial post. You just blabbered on about your whims regarding mathematics.

I forgot to mention the attempt at tarring the choice of texts tested as being in some way wrongly done, because people had interests regarding some of the texts.

You and your mate were simply gunning to carve the C14. Too bad. You turn out trivia.

What's the point when you done respond to the criticism you've already received?

"Child-like"? You must be joking, Joe. Can't you come up with a better adjectival attack than that?

You've said nothing of any value in your rave other than that the samples were rather small and you didn't acknowledge that that was simply what the holders of the scrolls made available. One works with what one is given. Read Jull's write-up and you'll find that he did mention a few problems about size of a few samples.

The rest of your stuff, well, what would you like responded to, that hasn't been commented on?? Your cock-and-bull stuff about how so many old commentators' theories are still in print? Forget it, Joe. You have the last mumble.


spin

John Deere

Spin:

Insteading of more child like insults simply explain exactly what you feel is inaccurate within the following passage from my paper that relates to your claim that I "tarted up" the analysis. Let me help. Is the equation incorrect? Where multi-samples taken? If you have really nothing in mind then simply say so.


"Where 1QpHab and 4Q267 are concerned, the 1998 recalibration was particularly significant as it brought both of those Scrolls’ two-sigma time range well into the First

Century CE. There is, however, reason to believe that the reported standard deviations in the C14 measurements of the Scrolls do not represent the true variation within these
measurements. This is because for the most part only a single sample seems to have been utilized for dating purposes from each scroll. We are not speaking here about the number of “runs� that might have been done on any given sample. As argued by N. L. Caldararo, when using only a single sample any variation that would exist between different samples that came from the same host is lost and the imprecision of the measurement technique becomes the predominant contributor to the reported variance.

Though Jull, Donahue, Broshi, and Tov do refer to “several sub-samples� in some instances, they admit that “only a few independent measurements were made due to sample-size limitations.� Though the weights of their samples varied from a low of 4.9 mg ( 4Q521 ) to a high of 56.5 mg ( 1QIsa ), in turn seemingly dictated the number of “runs�, their only general remark is that “all samples were taken from ragged edges of top or bottom margins of the scrolls.� Still in both Tables 1 and 2, outlining their results including those for both 4QpPs37 and 1QpHab, only a single sample is referred to and the reference to “sub-samples� seems to refer for the most part to the material consumed in each of the several runs.

This might be wrong, but as demonstrated by R.E.M. Hedges on well-controlled samples, the sample-to-sample variation was found to be a substantial portion of the overall variance in multi-sample tests. . In the case he cites the best overall standard deviation achieved was +/- 45 years, although it can be significantly larger. This was for measurement precision originally established as +/- 20 years! In other words, there can be great differences between samples taken from different parts of the same host and variations such as these must be included when calculating the range of a given sigma.

In the reports as they were presented, as we just saw, no indication is given of how many samples were taken from a given scroll and from which parts. If only one sample were taken, which for the most part seems to have been true, this variance is not accounted for and the resulting sigma is less accurate than one obtained from multiple samples.

Though the tables Jull, Donahoe, Broshi, and Tov provide do suggest an average of four “runs� were done on documents across the board, nothing is stated in these tables about how many separate samples they used from different parts of the Scrolls or how many runs were taken on samples from different parts of the document or, if they did use more than one sample from different parts of a scroll, what the variance or disparities in the results might have been in these separate runs.

A series of runs, therefore, on the same sample area – say four --might help make a suggested sigma measurements more precise, but do not really have a determining bearing on the final range of such sigmas since it has been shown that repeated measurements from different samples from the same host are required in assessing the true sample variance. This very definitely presents a lacuna in the reports they provide to say nothing of the results they claim to have achieved.

This brings us back to our third overall point. The uncertainty surrounding C14 dating generally is comprised of several variance components. These include: the precision of the test on a single sample, variation from sample to sample from a given source, and a variety of other unknowns such as possible calibration error and the uncertainty remarked above, regarding the period of time between death of the animal whose skin was used for the parchment being tested and when that parchment was written upon.

In general, the different contributions to uncertainty add up according the equation:
S2 total = s2precision + s2reproducibility + s2other
Therefore, if sample-to-sample variations and other unknowns are left out of the analysis of C14 dates, as they were in both the write-ups and press reports of the 1991 and 1994-95 results, the conclusions are rendered inaccurate in proportion to the degree described by the above equation."

Well, Spin where is the error?

Joe