Well I assume his predictions were posted before the games? He got them all right I am told, but I have no idea how many he guessed on. Given that several of my friends were predicting a Spanish win before the contest began, I'd say he clearly has all the psychic potential of my roleplaying games group or watched SKY sports or read The Sun? So this may be proof for literate English speaking octopi (resident in Germany he was born here I believe), rather than immense psi powers!

Seriously, he got 70% right in Euro 98 the papers say, and has a 100% success rate in this tournament. As octopi have no knowledge of football (I presume), I assume chance - after all there is a 50/50 chance he will select the correct jar. I'm not sure how he would signal a draw? A run of 6 games with 50% chance of each must come up every so often.

I did wonder about octopus vision. Do they have colour or pattern recognition ability? One wonders if they are stimulted by red or yellow? Dunno, ask Dawkins, he's an ethologist, I'm just a parapsychologist and the only one I can think of who might comment meaningfully here is Dr Rupert Sheldrake!

j x

iamthereforeithink wrote:jerome, what's your opinion of Paul the Octopus?

A 6% chance:

wikipedia wrote:Assuming Paul's predictions were no better than fair coin flips, the probability of 12 or more successful predictions in 14 attempts is p = 0.0056 (~0.56%), as given by the binomial distribution.[36] And the probability of 8 successful predictions out of 8 attempts is p = 0.0039 (~0.39%).[37] However, the first three matches were in the group stage where the outcome could have been a win, loss, or tie, resulting in a 1/3 probability of getting the result correct. As a result, the true probability of Paul's feat is [(.3^3)*(.5^5)] or .12%. Of course there were many public predictions about World Cup results using quirky methods that were wrong and hence did not get international attention. It is an xample of the Prosecutor's fallacy to use the same data that brought Paul to fame to suggest that he has precognition. Paul started to receive international recognition after he correctly predicted Germany's win over England, and after that he only made four correct predictions. The chance of those final four predictions being correct is 0.5^4 = 0.0625 = 6.25% (odds 15/1).

GrahamH wrote:

iamthereforeithink wrote:jerome, what's your opinion of Paul the Octopus?

A 6% chance:

wikipedia wrote:Assuming Paul's predictions were no better than fair coin flips, the probability of 12 or more successful predictions in 14 attempts is p = 0.0056 (~0.56%), as given by the binomial distribution.[36] And the probability of 8 successful predictions out of 8 attempts is p = 0.0039 (~0.39%).[37] However, the first three matches were in the group stage where the outcome could have been a win, loss, or tie, resulting in a 1/3 probability of getting the result correct. As a result, the true probability of Paul's feat is [(.3^3)*(.5^5)] or .12%. Of course there were many public predictions about World Cup results using quirky methods that were wrong and hence did not get international attention. It is an xample of the Prosecutor's fallacy to use the same data that brought Paul to fame to suggest that he has precognition. Paul started to receive international recognition after he correctly predicted Germany's win over England, and after that he only made four correct predictions. The chance of those final four predictions being correct is 0.5^4 = 0.0625 = 6.25% (odds 15/1).

Interesting. Is there a way to calculate p-values for determining statistical significance?

Hi all,

Just to let you know that I'm afraid I won't be able to post at the weekend. I'm superduper busy with the end of the school year in sight.

I've already spoken to Jerome and he's OK with that.

Sorry guys.

campermon wrote:Hi all,

Just to let you know that I'm afraid I won't be able to post at the weekend. I'm superduper busy with the end of the school year in sight.

I've already spoken to Jerome and he's OK with that.

Sorry guys.

Oh yeah that's what he told you. You should've heard the things he was calling you. I didn't know that was anatomically possible

Well, as long as he's ok with it... Consenting adults and so on...

campermon wrote:Hi all,

Just to let you know that I'm afraid I won't be able to post at the weekend. I'm superduper busy with the end of the school year in sight.

Perhaps you need a ghost writer.

John

I can't wait for the next post! I forgot we even had formal debates here!

I'd have to say I agree that the scientific evidence thus far put forward by Jerome is.. dodgy at best. I'm biased though.

I'm looking forward to giving that 'dark-room' experiment a try.

jaredennisclark wrote:I can't wait for the next post! I forgot we even had formal debates here!

I'd have to say I agree that the scientific evidence thus far put forward by Jerome is.. dodgy at best. I'm biased though.

I'm looking forward to giving that 'dark-room' experiment a try.

Sorry for the delay in the next post........school's nearly out!

jaredennisclark wrote:I can't wait for the next post! I forgot we even had formal debates here!

I'd have to say I agree that the scientific evidence thus far put forward by Jerome is.. dodgy at best. I'm biased though.

I'm looking forward to giving that 'dark-room' experiment a try.

I'd love to try it too. I've been trying to think of somewhere in our house that we could do it - not easy since we have a street light outside, and none -too -thick curtains. The only place I think I might be able to set it up is on the landing, but I need to wait until everybody else is out or not needing the bog for half an hour.

Just checking in...

Will begin writing my next post probably after tomorrow (big planning day tomorrow).

Schools out on Friday! Yay!!!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8vnVWfOzZI[/youtube]

Just checking in....

Schools out! Yay!!!

Will be mainly drinking beer for the rest of the day, but will knock up a response tomorrow!

Thanks for being patient..

campermon wrote:Just checking in....

Schools out! Yay!!!

Will be mainly drinking beer for the rest of the day, but will knock up a response tomorrow!

Thanks for being patient..

Looking forward to it

twistor59 wrote:

campermon wrote:Just checking in....

Schools out! Yay!!!

Will be mainly drinking beer for the rest of the day, but will knock up a response tomorrow!

Thanks for being patient..

Looking forward to it

Work in progress...just got hold of Colvins paper and am now carrying out some beer mat physics experiments......

Try bubble wrap. That's an explosion, easily to hand for much of the period covered, and was my first thought

cj x

Just posted response!

Post online! Thanks Mods!

Are there any .wav files around which have some alleged poltergeist raps on them ?
Having seen the traces, I'm just curious to know what they sound like. The real ones, not Campermon's fingernails !!

twistor59 wrote:Are there any .wav files around which have some alleged poltergeist raps on them ?
Having seen the traces, I'm just curious to know what they sound like. The real ones, not Campermon's fingernails !!

I'm working on it now...

j x