Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 09:15:14 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Skiffy Book Club Top 50
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

> kfl at keithlynch.net 03/04/03 12:06AM
>>Ron Kean wrote:
>> What are the chances that the actual sales rank would precisely
>> correspond with an alphabetical ordering by title, for 40 titles
>> in a row?
>
>For a particular forty, 1 / 40! or about 1 in 8.2E+47.  For any
>consecutive 40 out of 50, it would be 50! / (40! * 40! * 10!), or
>about 1 in 7.9E+37.
>
>Of course there are many other equally unlikely patterns.  For
>instance reverse alphabetic by title, or forward or reverse alphabetic
>by author's first or last name, or in order of the author's birthdate.
>But there probably aren't more than 79 of them, so I'd give rough odds
>of 1.0E-36, or one in a trillion trillion trillion that this pattern
>isn't real.
>
>But then you have to apply Bayes' theorem,

Gee . . . I've sold that, I think: http://www.press.jhu.edu/press/books/tit=
les/f02/f02leba.htm

> based on the a priori
>probability that the list is not in order of sales (or whatever it's
>supposed to be).  If that a priori probability is low enough, i.e. if
>you're told this by someone you know to be absolutely trustworthy, who
>has personally verified the sales figures, then you could be justified
>in dismissing Ted's observation as a remarkable coincidence.  But
>that's not very likely.
>
>No doubt Eric will step in to correct me.  But I think I got it right.

According to http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2003-03-02-tolkien_x.h=
tm :   " [the editors] choices, released Sunday, rank the top 10 books and =
list 40 other unranked titles chosen for literary quality, historical =
importance, originality and readability."

mjw