Re: Results of my test: Re: Friday 13th, try it yourself

[adam@irvine.com (Adam Beneschan)]

Lee Crites <adonai@jump.net> writes:

 >As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  I guess I went out 
 >of my way to prove something nobody cared about.  I got a message telling 
 >me I was proving the wrong thing.  The discussion was not "how frequently 
 >does each date happen on a Friday," but was "how frequently is the 13th a 
 >Friday."  The argument, as I understand it, is that the 13th is a Friday 
 >more often than some other day because of some statistical glitch in the 
 >calendar.
 >
 >My initial proof showed that each date happened on each day of the week 
 >basically as often as any other.  I would think that would be enough to 
 >close the topic.  However, I was requested to test it the other way -- 
 >tell me how often the 13th happens on each day of the week.  Fine.  I 
 >went in and changed my scripts to do so.  I've included them here just as 
 >I did before.
 >
 >However, the results are no different.  Basically, the 13th falls 
 >uniformily across each day of the week.
 
Uh, your own results prove that the 13th falls on Friday more often
than on other days of the week.  Yes, the numbers are "basically" the
same, but no one has been arguing that there's a big difference, have
they?  No one has claimed that the 13th is a Friday 25% more often
than a Monday, or anything like that.

Next time the Lakers beat the Bullets 104-103 or something, are you
going to say that they should score it as a tie in the standings,
because the two teams got basically the same number of points?  :-)
:-) :-)

                                -- Adam


[snip] 
 >And finally, here are the results of the run:
 >
 >Summary of days which the 13th happen on:
 >
 >      4800 total items
 >
 >       Sun found  687 times
 >       Mon found  685 times
 >       Tue found  685 times
 >       Wed found  687 times
 >       Thu found  684 times
 >       Fri found  688 times
 >       Sat found  684 times
 >     error found    0 times