the macs department colloquium secret codes in the bible: a tale of math, science, statistics and...

The MACS Department Colloquium Secret Codes in the Bible:

A Tale of Math, Science, Statistics and Psychic Ability

Michael Drosnin’s 1997 book

“The biggest news of the millenium – maybe of all human history even”

–The Baltimore Sun

Equal Letter Skips (ELS)

• Start at the first letter of the first book of the Torah (the first five books of the bible) in Hebrew. It is the Hebrew equivalent of “T”

• Skip 49 letters (an important number in Judaism) to the 50th letter “O”. Skip another 49 to “R” and then again to “H”

• It spells the Hebrew word for Torah

ELS

• Taking the text of the bible without spaces or punctuation, starting from any letter, and choosing any skip length (positive or negative) , the resulting word or message is called an Equal Letter Skip or ELS.

• First explored by 13th-century Spanish Rabbi Bachya ben Asher. Became popular with advent of computers.

ELSs Appearing together

• Visualize by imagining writing the text in lines of a given length. Verticals and diagonals are ELSs.

• ELSs that appear in a small window together in this fashion are viewed as being connected to each other

ELSs Appearing Together(e.g. from King James’s Genesis)

• Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg, 1994, peer reviewed in Statistical Science, appeared to show bible codes predicted events that later came to pass.

• Drosnin, American reporter in Middle East, began looking for these codes. Found numerous predictions including…

• Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, as predicted by Drosnin

Should we take this as evidence that there are predictions of future events encoded in the

bible?

• How to we assess evidence in favor of a hypothesis?

A Simple Example• If I claimed to be a psychic, how would you

assess my claim?• Ask me to predict the result of a coin flip.• Would you be convinced if I got 2 out of 3

right?• How about 99 out of 100?

The First Principle of Hypothesis Testing

• To measure how well your data supports a hypothesis ask “Suppose the hypothesis weren’t true, how likely would I be to see data like yours?”

• If it is very unlikely, since you did see your data, the supposition must be wrong, so this supports this hypothesis.

Gary Larson Cartoon

Chances of guessing right

• If I flip one coin• I could guess it right (R) or wrong (W), and

both are equally likely so

None right 1/2

One right 1/2


• If I flip two coins• Four possibilities RR, RW, WR, WW, all equally

likely• One has me right twice, two have me right

once, one has me right no times

None right 1/4

One right 1/2

Two right 1/4


• If I flip three coins• Now there are eight possibilities

WWW WWR WRW RWW RRW RWR WRR RRR

0 right 1/8

1 right 3/8

2 right 3/8

3 right 1/8

There is a pattern!

11/2 1/2

1/4 1/2 1/41/8 3/8 3/8 1/8

The pattern

11/2 1/2

1/4 1/2 1/41/8 3/8 3/8 1/8

The pattern

11/2 1/2

1/4 1/2 1/41/8 3/8 3/8 1/8

Each number is the average of the two above it.

Why is that?

• Suppose you have 16 people each guess four coin flips.

• Stop after 3 flips and see how they are doing• We figured before…

On the first three flips2 of them will get none right

6 of the will get one right

6 of them will get two right

2 of them will get three right

On the next flip, half of each are right

0 or 1 right

1 or 2 right

2 or 3 right

3 or 4 right

1/16 + 3/16 =4/16 get 1 right0 or 1 right

1 or 2 right

2 or 3 right

3 or 4 right

So..

Chance of 1 right out of 4 is ½ times chance of 0 right out of 3

+ ½ times chance of 1 right out of 3

or ½ times 1/8 + ½ times 3/8

or the average of 1/8 and 3/8

or 4/16

We can fill in the triangle now1

1/2 1/2

1/4 2/4 1/4

1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8


1/2 1/2

1/4 2/4 1/4

1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8

1/16


1/2 1/2

1/4 2/4 1/4

1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8

1/16 3/16


1/2 1/2

1/4 2/4 1/4

1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8

1/16 3/16 3/16


1/2 1/2

1/4 2/4 1/4

1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8

1/16 3/16 6/16 6/16

And if we keep going…1

1/2 1/2

1/4 2/4 1/4

1/8 3/8 3/8 1/8

1/16 3/16 6/16 6/16 6/16

…221 slides laterNumber Right Percent

0 0.001%

1 0.013%

2 0.104%

3 0.519%

4 1.816%

5 4.721%

6 9.442%

7 14.838%

8 18.547%

9 18.547%

10 14.838%

11 9.442%

12 4.721%

13 1.816%

14 0.519%

15 0.104%

16 0.013%

17 0.001%

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 170.000%

2.000%

4.000%

6.000%

8.000%

10.000%

12.000%

14.000%

16.000%

18.000%

20.000%

Percentage of All Guessers

the macs department colloquium secret codes in the bible: a tale of math, science, statistics and...

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