I decided to add a new category to Stormbruiser.  It is called “BLOG”.  I would not have known what a “blog” was 20 years ago.  It sounds like a good place to keep your second-rate logs.

And so, here I submit what some might call a second-rate log entry.  Many of my blog entries will be tongue-in-cheek.  It is up to you to determine which are serious and which are not —- you wouldn’t want me to spoil all of the fun and make it easy to figure out, would you?  In these blog entries I have a great opportunity to poke fun at unsuspecting folks.  Isn’t that what life’s all about?

I was recently referred to an online article on Comet Ison:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/20120925-comet-ison.html

This appears to be an article by Bill Gray regarding Comet Ison.  But, a note by editor Emily Lakdawalla says that she  “turned to Bill Gray” for these details.  So, I don’t know who wrote this.  This is a bad start.

The title of the article is:

Comet ISON: 30% chance of awesome, 60% chance of that being wrong

Wow—look at that large and bold font!  Copying and pasting has never been this much fun.  But, even more fun is trying to figure out what these percentages actually mean.

If you dissect this title literally and statistically, it says that there is a 30% chance of awesome (first part), AND a 60 percent chance of the 30% chance of awesome being incorrect (second part).  Or, put another way, a 30 percent chance of awesome (first part) AND a 60 percent chance of the 30 percent chance of not awesome.  This second part yields an 18 percent chance (0.3 x 0.6) of not awesome.

Now, for this second part, we have to imply, since there is a 60 percent chance of a 30 percent chance of not awesome, that this carries with it a 60 percent chance that there is a 70 percent chance of awesome. This works out to 42 percent for awesome. Then there is the remaining 40 percent chance that he is right about the 30 percent chance of awesome (12 percent awesome) and a 40 percent chance that he is wrong about a 30 percent chance of awesome, or a 40 percent chance of a 70 percent chance of not awesome (28 percent chance).

So, to summarize the second part:

18 percent chance of not awesome

42 percent awesome

12 percent awesome

28 percent not awesome

Add these up and we get 54 percent chance of awesome and 46 percent chance of not awesome.  This is for the second part.

Now, working in the first part and the second part together we get:

a) ISOD has a 30 percent chance of awesome, a 70 percent chance of not awesome

b) and if he is wrong, an additional 54 percent chance of awesome, and an additional 46 percent chance of not awesome.

Since these add up to 200 percent, it means that someone might need to reconsider the title of this blog or article and/or review his or her text on probabilities and statistics.

The article is indeed quite informative as to many of the details and unknowns regarding the comet.  The final paragraph sums things up nicely:

—-

So, as to whether it’s something about which to get excited: I’d give it about a 30% chance of being exciting, with a 60% chance that I’m wrong. In other words, it’ll certainly bear keeping an eye on, but I don’t think anyone can say for sure right now.

—-

I am glad that the writer saw fit to put into other words the “30 percent chance of exciting/60 percent chance of that being wrong” analysis.  It would be good to get a better handle on that.  However, “it will bear keeping an eye on” is of little additional help, even though he or she is certain of that.  I am certainly glad that this comet is able to bear the brunt of us humans on earth watching the thing.  What if all comets suddenly dissipated into nothing simply because they were unable to bear the burden of having our gaze affixed upon them?  They would be no fun at all!  But what if we decided to use both eyes to look at Comet Ison?  Will it still bear this?  What if two-eyed bears look at the comet?  And bears with an eye patch on?  Will Comet Ison bear the gaze of two-eyed bear keepers with certainty, or will it fizzle away and/or turn around and head to another star?  If the comet can bear the burden of the gaze of any earthly eye, and the gaze of millions of eyes, then why not just come out and say it?  Why limit the wording to only one eye?  And,  could the writer literally mean that the comet will be able to withstand the placement of an eye upon its surface without undue harm?  If the eye of a newt were dispatched to Comet Ison’s icy surface, would the space object object?  Or would it whirl out of its orbit?  And why would anyone want to consider keeping their eye, or eye of any creature, on the surface of a comet?  It would likely get lost, and the cost and hassle of retrieving the eye might be prohibitive.  I am glad that it will “certainly bear keeping an eye on”, but I do not see how these other words begin to help to clarify the excitement part.

One more thing, if you are a one-eyed bear keeper, it probably is a good idea to watch the bears instead of the comet.

As for “I don’t think anyone can say for sure right now”, is the writer saying that no one can say for sure if the comet certainly bears keeping an eye on, or that no one can say for sure that there is about a 30 percent chance of the comet being exciting, or that no one can be sure that there is a 60 percent chance that he is wrong that there is a 30 percent chance that the comet will be exciting?   Or is it a combination of these things that he or she does not think anyone can say for sure right now?  Is there still some wiggle room with these percentages?   When will the writer think that anyone will say these things with absolute surety?  Certainly there must be a 50 percent chance that I am right when I say that I think that the writer could be wrong about anyone knowing anything for sure right now.