Peter,
I have a question about the values used for the Greek letters in your
computation. 6 was apparently once the archaic digamma, which looked like
F, but final sigma took its place. 90 was qoph and 900 a letter that
looked like an inverted psi. The latter two have no place in the New
Testament text, but using 6 or 200 makes a large difference. All six
sigmas in John 1:1 are final.
Dave
On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 17:30:41 +0200 pruest@pop.dplanet.ch writes:
> > "Iain Strachan" <iain@istrachan.clara.co.uk> wrote to
> <vernon.jenkins@virgin.net> (29 Jun 2001 01:07:06 +0100):
>
> >[snip]
> > I will state here that when I first heard of the approximation to
> Pi in =
> > Genesis 1:1, that I was a bit skeptical to start with. Initially,
> it =
> > was just a formula taking the letter product divided by the word =
> > product, and it gave a figure for pi/4 multiplied by an arbitrary
> power =
> > of 10. At that point, I reckoned that it was no more than "mildly
> =
> > interesting", as someone else put it. Then it became clear that
> the =
> > number of letters (28) was 4 times the number of words, so the =
> > correction to the formula (Num letters) * (letter product) /
> (Num =
> > words)*(word product) led to an approximation for Pi, times an
> arbitrary
> > power of 10. This still wasn't quite enough to convince me that
> this =
> > was a genuine happening and not a fluke of coincidence; the
> formula =
> > seems an arbitrary one plucked out of thin air, and difficult to
> justify
> > unless a different verse could be made to show a similar feature
> with =
> > exactly the same formula; which would confirm independently that
> the =
> > formula was in some sense valid.
> >
> > It was when someone else plugged the numerical values of John 1:1
> into =
> > precisely the same formula to arrive at a similarly accurate =
> > approximation for e (multiplied by a power of 10), that I was
> finally =
> > convinced that this merited further attention. It makes
> coincidence an
> > extremely long shot, as the formula was not tweaked or altered in
> any =
> > way to produce the "e" result. Also validates the letter
> count/word =
> > count correction factor. If the original formula had been applied
> to =
> > John 1:1, there would have been a very accurate approximation to
> 17e/52,
> > which would hardly have jumped out at anyone.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > Other observations I have made subsequently involve evaluating
> "the =
> > formula" on every verse in the Torah (some 5000 verses - with a
> computer
> > program). I can confirm that the formula effectively computes a
> random =
> > varible. The fractional part of the base 10 part of the logarithm
> of =
> > the function gives a uniform distribution in the range 0 to 1, as
> one =
> > would expect. Genesis 1:1 is the verse that is closest to pi,
> differing
> > by 10^-5. If one selects an arbitrary other constant (say the
> square =
> > root of two), then one normally finds that the closest one is
> around =
> > 10^-4 distant, which is in accord with what one would expect with
> 5000 =
> > data samples. The second closest verse to pi has a difference of
> 10^-4;
> > so Gen 1:1 is an order of magnitude closer to pi than it.
> >[snip]
>
> With Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew, I got a relative deviation (delta Pi)/Pi
> of
> 0.001 %, in agreement with Iain Strachan's result. However, with
> John
> 1:1 in Greek, the relative deviation (delta e)/e was 0.54 %, not
> "similarly accurate". Could it be that I used different letter
> values
> somewhere? (I used 1 to 9, 10 to 90, 100 to 300 for 21 Hebrew
> letters
> alef to taw (omitting tsade, unassigned to a number), and 1 to 5, 7
> to
> 9, 10 to 80, 100 to 800 for 24 Greek letters alpha to omega,
> omitting 6
> (Hebrew waw) and 90 (Hebrew qof) assigned to no Greek letters).
>
> But I have difficulties with the assignment of probabilities to
> these
> findings. Even if 10^-4 is the expected value for the best match in
> 5000
> Torah verses, it does not look very improbable to me if one of the
> verses gets to 10^-5 of some particular value aimed at. And 0.005
> seems
> to be not at all remarkable. Would any one of you who are
> knowledgable
> in probability calculations care about describing here how to find
> relevant probabilities?
>
> Peter
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Peter Ruest Biochemistry
> Wagerten Creation and evolution
> CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern Tel.: ++41 31 731 1055
> Switzerland E-mail: <pruest@dplanet.ch
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> In biology - there's no free lunch -
> and no information without an adequate source.
> In Christ - there is free and limitless grace -
> for those of a contrite heart.
> --------------------------------------------------------------
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