Amaleq13

We ALREADY know that the name was not the result of chance, Ted. Either it was deliberately chosen by an author or deliberately chosen by whomever started the belief or deliberately chosen by the child's parents. If that is the purpose of your calculations, I've just saved you a buttload of time. You're welcome.

Replace "meaningless" with "unreliable" and add "as well as irrelevant to the conclusion" and you've got it.

I'm well aware of how statistics are properly used to establish relevant probability statements, Ted. IMO, you are doing neither in this instance. :wave:

TedM

Are you trying to be funny? Obviously the name was deliberately chosen. The question is whether the name was deliberately associated with its meaning in order to 1 either be consistent with a created character or 2 determine actual behavior by the character


IMO, you haven't addressed the issue at all in a meaningful way. A good step in the right direction would be to address the example I have given instead of sidestepping it. Otherwise, it appears to me that you are really not saying anything significant, other than this or that is "unreliable" which really you can't even conclude without first doing some kind of statistical analysis! In other words, your objections are no only invalid, they are the opposite of what you actually are doing in practice!

ted

Amaleq13

And succeeding AFAIC.

Then what does chance have to do with it?

Your statistics cannot answer either question and that is why your entire approach is flawed.

Sure I have. I've told you that you are wasting your time because the numbers you are collecting cannot answer the questions you are asking. There is no meaningful connection between the two and you have offered nothing to suggest otherwise.

TedM

I've offered an example to show you the meaningfulness of what I am trying to do and you once again have refused to address it. I can only conclude it's because you either dont' understand it or you realize that by addressing it you will expose the fact that you don't know what you are talking about. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but until you show some evidence to the contrary, I have to go with the most reasonable probability.

ted

Amaleq13

I hope you like crow, amigo.

As I expected, unwrapping what was wrong with your example was more trouble than it was worth. There are problems throughout.

Assumption: 1 in 10 people in a typical sample had a messianic name 2000 years ago.

You'll need to define “a messianic name 2000 years ago� when you try this for real.

I don’t know why this was included but it does not follow from the assumption so I’m ignoring it. If you are smart, you will, too.

This is another way of stating the assumption. If you collected 100 shmoes, 10 probably would have “a messianic name�.

Claim #1: Author deliberately fabricated the name of a mythical person to have a messianic meaning

Assuming it to be a fictional story, we can conclude that the chances are 100% that the author chose the name of his central character deliberately. If the name is messianic and the role of the character is messianic, it is difficult to understand how that could possibly not be a deliberate choice.

This involves a complete misstatement of the initial assumption. You’ve switched the frequency of a messianic name with the probability of an author randomly choosing a messianic name. The first neither requires nor suggests the latter so they cannot simply be exchanged as synonymous without justification. Is he carefully collecting in a bag all possible names in the same ratio as the random sample? Does that seem like a reasonable thing for him to do to name his main character?

Claim #2: Given a historical messianic figure existed, his name would have been messianic.

You’ve again misstated the initial assumption only this time by switching populations. You need completely different numbers for this claim because it involves a different population. You need the frequency of messianic names within the sub-population of historical messianic figures.

Your example completely fails to explain or justify your approach. Your numbers are not relevant to your claims. Your claims are not based upon your numbers.

Total waste of my time, to be perfectly blunt. :banghead:

TedM

That's what we are testing. The odds are that he wasn't picking the name randomly. The fact is Amaleq, that the author could have picked either a messianic name or a non-messianic name. The odds are only 10% that he would randomly pick a non-messianic name, so since the name picked was messianic we can say that the chances are strong that such a pick was not a random act. The beauty of using statistics here is that we don't have to get into the author's mind and say he "would have done this or that", and we don't have to dig into some sub-population of authors to determine what THIS PARTICULAR author was most likely to do.



Nope. My population is simply a list of names that could have been used for typical Jewish person during that time.


No. That would make the calculations more accurate perhaps, but my population is still valid. Anyway, I accounted for a subpopulation in my example when I said that a person with a messianic name would be twice as likely to behave like one. I think that is a reasonable assumption. Do you not? Do you REALLY think that a person's name had more than a doubling of the odds that he behaved like a messiah, Amaleq? If it really did then I agree that a further sub-population would be desirable.

The problem with your analysis is that a person can ALWAYS require a potentially more relevant sub-population. You could further sub-divide it by region, by age of messiah, by height, by religious background, etc..., until finally you only have one person left and get a DEFINITIVE answer!

When you talk about "getting into the author's mind" and finding a more relevant sub-population, you keep requiring something closer and closer to proof Amaleq, while rejecting potentially very relevant populations. In this case the population was a typical list of names. The reliability of the conclusions should increase in proportion to the number of relevant populations examined. In the absence of proof, probability analysis is needed for reasonable conclusions.

I'll agree that statistics have inherant limitations, but to claim they are meaningless requires one to show WHY and HOW they are meaningless. You have failed to do this.

ted

Amaleq13

I suppose that depends on whether his name qualifies according to however you intend to define "a messianic name 2000 years ago". If it does, it seems moronic to suggest that he chose a messianic name for his messianic character on accident. You go right ahead, though.

First, you don't have those odds so there is nothing at which we might look. You have assumed only the frequency of messianic names in a random sample of people (ie 10%). That the sample is random does not make the frequency random. Understand? The frequency is determined by parental preference which is, I suppose, largely culturally determined. Certain names become popular at certain times for a variety of reasons. That isn't as important, however, as you grasping the concept that the frequency is clearly not random because parents don't choose the name of their child at random. You cannot pretend that a non-random frequency is the same thing as the probability of a random choice. They are opposites.

The odds for a random choice of a messianic name from out of all possible names would be determined by assigning numbers to those factors. You need the number of all possible names and the number of messianic names to calculate those odds.

Second, even if we had odds on the random selection of a messianic name from all possible names, it tells us nothing about an author writing fiction because they do not typically choose the name of their main character at random.

I really don't think you have even a vague clue as to what you are doing, Ted. Please explain specifically why the frequency with which parents gave their child a messianic name informs us of the probability a man will randomly choose a messianic name out of a hat full of all possible names.

Your disbelief aside, those are clearly different numbers based on different factors.

No, Ted, it is what you must assume in order to make your initial statistics equivalent to his random choice. Only if we assume the author is randomly selecting from the same frequency distribution can the frequency distribution number be applied to his random selection. His chances of drawing a messianic name would then be 1 out of 10 but you have not explained why we should make that rather bizarre assumption.

That is a "fact"? Seems to me more like an assumption that only historicity could limit the author's choice. I don't suppose you have a basis for that, do you? You might want to hold off trying defend new assumptions, though. You're confused enough already.

Wrong again. Your initial population was a random sample of people. Your proposed sample is restricted to historical messianic figures. Those are two different populations. One is all-inclusive. The other is specifically restrictive. You appear to want to assume that the frequency in the random sample is the same as the frequency of messianic names among historical messianic figures but you have not explained why this assumption should be accepted.

For that matter, why assume anything if "historical messianic figures" are available for counting and, therefore, can be compared against your list of messianic names? Whether you choose to use actual numbers or not, it should be clear that they are different numbers.

Unfortunately not just because you say so, Ted. You'll need to explain exactly why your assumption that they are equivalent is valid.

Please explain how that assumption informs us of the likelihood that a historical messianic figure would have a messianic name?

No, I think it probably had less influence but it really isn't important. You've got enough of a mess without adding goofy assumptions to it.

Do you really not understand that a statistic describing the name choices for the general population is not necessarily predictive for a specifically identified sub-group? Does it make sense to you to apply the statistics describing the most common names chosen for boys in the U.S. to name preferences for Hasidic Jews in New York? Different populations, Ted.

The requirement of new statistics describing the sub-group is not from my personal preference but the result of your claim. You are not making a claim about the frequency distribution of names in the general population. You are making a claim about the frequency distribution of names in a smaller, sub-population. But you have only assumed numbers for the former. You are free to make the same assumption for the sub-group but you need to explain why. I hope it isn't because you are confusing the random nature of the sample with the non-random nature of the frequency but I suspect it is.

Steven Avery

Was Alice (in Wonderland) a random name, or did it represent something special about her nature. Or did the name have a special 'ring', perhaps a naivety that is linked with certain sounds, that made it more appropriate than using Gladys or Gertrude? . Is Wonderland simply a title, or is it considered part of the name, and if so, was the fact of the land having a meaningful name random or specific or directed or prophetic ? Statistically speaking, is there a probablistic a priori significance of the sampling size of novel names being neutral in neural non-applicability. Perhaps the names were taken from the Jefferson Airplane song, White Rabbit, working from a string theory parallel universe ?

TedM

This is definitely deja vu all over again , and it is tiring, but I'll give one last attempt to respond:

The bottom line statement I am making is that the less frequent the occurance of a messianic name in a typical population of Jews of that time and region, the MORE likely that we can conclude that IF a messianic character in writing has a messianic name, the author deliberately chose the name for its meaning, and the LESS likely that we can conclude that the character with that name was actually a historical person. It really is a simple statement that seems pretty obvious to me.

I attempted to illustrate that initially by comparing a 5 out of 10 group with a 1 out of 10 group.

You have disagreed with this assumption, apparantly, by claiming that this kind of attempt to use probabilities is "meaningless".

If you still disagree, then I see no point in continuing. If you think that my example somehow was saying a whole lot more, than I apologize for not being clearer.


ted

S.C.Carlson

These questions are probably rhetorical, but Alice in Wonderland was named after Alice Liddell, the daughter of Henry George Liddell, who edited the famous Greek-English lexicon.

Now that we've gotten this piece of trivia out of the way, let's get back to the regularly scheduled discussion.

Stephen