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"those 30 numbers all end in a 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. The chances of this happening by chance are effectively 0." What are the odds of those 30 numbers all ending i

"those 30 numbers all end in a 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. The chances of this happening by chance are effectively 0." What are the odds of those 30 numbers all ending in some numbers in a random set of 5 single-digit numbers? Also, considering all the numbers in the Bible, what are the odds that some arbitrarily chosen set of them will contain some sort of unusual pattern?

guerrilla 6y ago
I was thinking the same until I saw this [1] in the references of the Wikipedia article. What's with all the factors of 7? That's oddly specific. Here's [2] the article it's responding to with further tables. 1. https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF6-04Johnson.pdf https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF6-04Johnson.pdf 2. http://www.spachurches.com/uploads/5/6/8/7/5687389/numbers_in_genesis.pdf http://www.spachurches.com/uploads/5/6/8/7/5687389/numbers_i...
dbatten 6y ago
I don't have the math in front of me for the first question, but I've seen it worked out in the past. It's on the order of 1 in a billion. On the second question, considering "all the numbers in the Bible," an arbitrarily chosen number or set of numbers from the Bible will contain a pattern very, very often, because that's how people thought in that culture. Jesus didn't have 12 disciples by accident. They symbolically represent the 12 tribes of Israel. The genealogy in Matthew 1 doesn't contain 3 sets of 14 generations by accident. The author had to skip at least a few kings from the Jewish tradition to make it work out. And the fact that it's intentional is underscored by him explicitly saying "so, there were 3 sets of 14 generations..." (He's making a theological point, but the details of that aren't relevant to the question at hand.) I could go on... Intentional numerical patterns are, in fact, quite common! And this gives us more, not less, reason to suspect that the Genesis 5 genealogy has an intentional pattern.
bonchicbongenre 6y ago
Let's assume that final digits are uniformly distributed in such measurements (Benford's law says this isn't the case for first digits, but that's beside the point). Then P(last_digit in size 5 set) =1/2 for a single measure. So the probability they all are is 1/(2^30), which is on the order of one in a billion as the other reply says (good heuristics: 2^10 ≈ 1000, 2^20 ≈ 1,000,000, 2^30 ≈ 1,000,000,000)

guerrilla 6y ago

I was thinking the same until I saw this [1] in the references of the Wikipedia article. What's with all the factors of 7? That's oddly specific. Here's [2] the article it's responding to with further tables. 1. https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF6-04Johnson.pdf https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF6-04Johnson.pdf 2. http://www.spachurches.com/uploads/5/6/8/7/5687389/numbers_in_genesis.pdf http://www.spachurches.com/uploads/5/6/8/7/5687389/numbers_i...

dbatten 6y ago

I don't have the math in front of me for the first question, but I've seen it worked out in the past. It's on the order of 1 in a billion. On the second question, considering "all the numbers in the Bible," an arbitrarily chosen number or set of numbers from the Bible will contain a pattern very, very often, because that's how people thought in that culture. Jesus didn't have 12 disciples by accident. They symbolically represent the 12 tribes of Israel. The genealogy in Matthew 1 doesn't contain 3 sets of 14 generations by accident. The author had to skip at least a few kings from the Jewish tradition to make it work out. And the fact that it's intentional is underscored by him explicitly saying "so, there were 3 sets of 14 generations..." (He's making a theological point, but the details of that aren't relevant to the question at hand.) I could go on... Intentional numerical patterns are, in fact, quite common! And this gives us more, not less, reason to suspect that the Genesis 5 genealogy has an intentional pattern.

bonchicbongenre 6y ago

Let's assume that final digits are uniformly distributed in such measurements (Benford's law says this isn't the case for first digits, but that's beside the point). Then P(last_digit in size 5 set) =1/2 for a single measure. So the probability they all are is 1/(2^30), which is on the order of one in a billion as the other reply says (good heuristics: 2^10 ≈ 1000, 2^20 ≈ 1,000,000, 2^30 ≈ 1,000,000,000)