I don’t know…that sphinx looks terrible.
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As a staff member at a Major American Art Museum, I can confirm that we generally turn to Pat Boone help authenticate historically significant art objects, and when he’s not available we go to Wayne Newton.*
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*uh, actually, no we don’t. I made this up.
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The only probability that would be convincing is if were a one in a million chance that it was Napoleon’s. As we well know from stories, movies, and GNU Sir Terry Pratchett, odds of exactly 1,000,000 to 1 against would guarantee it it was his.
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Yeah, the “probability” “analysis” relies on stuff like this:
“Four” repeats 21 times, the same as the number of face cards in the Tarot deck. “Four” is Tarot for Emperor, making this the dominant coding of the sphinx piece. The odds that this is coincidence are remote when combined with all the other factors…
The Mona Lisa, which Napoleon had hanging in his bedroom from 1800-1804, bears a striking resemblance to Josephine as well as to the crystal sphinx.
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I love how it takes 20 some odd lines of evidence with arbitrary 95 to 99% against. Treats them all as ANDS. Then the final probability weights almost completely on two debatable assumptions such as a date corresponding to Napoleans birthday being nearly definitive.
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With this type of “analysis”, you can similarly “prove” any chalice is the Holy Grail and that Jesus of Nazareth was the sole, original owner.
Whats weird too is, if you look up the “professor” cited as the source for this “analysis”, you find out: he’s a real professor (no quote unquote necessary), albeit at a very mediocre college. This actual professor at an actual college signed his name to this fraud. So now I’m at: Was this done without his knowledge/consent perhaps?
So, what they really should be doing is citing, not a math professor, but a middle-school math teacher. Someone who has their multiplication tables down pat.
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He’s a math professor, though. My guess is that his actual contribution to the “analysis” was multiplying all the various, wild-ass-guess probability values together to arrive at the desirably small final probability–though the analysis page certainly implies that he’s the author of the whole thing.
Objet d’fart.
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It’s been too long! I’ll have to re-read it.
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I just don’t understand how someone who has an advanced degree in math could generate this document with its conclusions?
On one hand some of the assumptions have completely arbitrary probabilities associated.
Secondly if I were working on I would have included all possible combinations of ORs as it could be Napoleons (or not Napoleans) with some of those assumptions being incorrect. You should also add a correction for the fact that there is no way those assumptions cover the compete probability space such as how many people share a birthday or special date within the potential dating and inscribing time. (and many more correction factors). However since I get confused in my probability equations once there are more than a handful of variables I’ll leave this as “probably rubbish”. I should send this to some of my Math PhD friends for a laugh.
If this was a valid approach, as you said, you could just use any string of arbitrary statements and “prove” that my coffee cup is the Holy Grail…
PS - For people while like this sort of thing. This book is “fun” Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability with Solutions by Frederick Mosteller. I can’t come anywhere near solving some of them but it’s interesting if you deal with probabilities or want to realize how little you understand them ;).
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Wait. What? Pat Boone is still alive and Napoleon was lucky?
I learned so much today.
Perhaps the people of the Ukraine could buy it and give it to Vladimir Putin as a present.
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