One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Lombro2]

Same two events, the same coincidence.

Whether this happened on May 17, 1889, or March 9, 1992 the two events are exactly the same and the coincidence is exactly the same

Isn't this where The Rule of Three comes in? That's what I go by. It's a simple rule that I don't think has ever really failed.

One is Happenstance. Two is Coincidence. Two could be more than a Coincidence but it doesn't prove it. You need Three. Two is not enough for proof. That's why I always said it could just be a coincidence, same as RJ. Until I found out the third thing that sealed the deal for me.

Ike's Three is, I believe, the players for One and Two probably going to the same pub at the same time--one going there every school day, and one living close to it, and knocking off work early that day. That didn't do it for me. I had to have a better factor to make Three or "Enemy Action".

[FISHY1118]

10846 post , Its still a fake .

[erobitha]

10846 post , Its still a fake .

Yet, you still feel the need to read and comment.

[FISHY1118]

Yet, you still feel the need to read and comment.

Which is my poragative.

[Iconoclast]

Ike, your analysis is entirely bogus, but at least it’s good for a laugh. Cheers.
For some bizarre reason, you’ve decided that it is appropriate to factor in the days when the floorboards were not lifted.
Think it through, Old Man. That, in a nutshell, is the flaw in your mathematical malpractice.
It’s still the same two events. No amount of double-talk or jiggery-pokery changes that.
The floorboards are lifted for the first time (supposedly)/a man goes to a literary agent with the diary.
Same two events, the same coincidence.
Whether this happened on May 17, 1889, or March 9, 1992 the two events are exactly the same and the coincidence is exactly the same.
Yet, for some unexplainable and illogical reason, you’ve decided to give credit to all the intervening days when the floorboards weren’t lifted, and nothing happened, and the earth was merely drifting its way around the sun.
Somehow, this meaningless non-factor that would be avoided by any competent statistician takes center stage in your analysis.
In your mind, the same exact coincidence is greater and more profound because it happened in 1992 rather than in 1889---and you’ve convinced yourself of this (and apparently convinced Markus and Jay and perhaps others) by simply counting backwards to when the subject of the hoax died.
It’s the epitome of allowing irrelevant data to cloud one's thinking.
That you can’t grasp the flaw is startling, but sometimes one must let it go.
If the children are going to run with scissors, they’ll do so. One can’t police them 24/7.
But thank you.
It’s been illuminating. Your analysis convinces me that Mike and Anne never fooled anyone.
Truly, it has always been a matter of believers fooling themselves.

I do so hope you aren't fooling anyone, RJ. Your ignorance of simple statistics is starting to sound rather contrived (like a wind-up merchant would do). Feedback is a gift, though, so it's up to you whether you unwrap it.

And we must all stop calling the double event of March 9, 1992, a 'coincidence'. Simple probability theory tells us it has almost no chance whatsoever of being simply a coincidence.

Mind you, most of us would not even require statistics to understand the rather obvious: a Jack the Ripper scrapbook purportedly written by James Maybrick gets talked about on the very day that workmen have been raising the floorboards in Maybrick's old house and one of the electricians drinks in the same pub as the bloke who talked about the scrapbook (who could have been living in Singapore or Australia or wherever but - surprise surprise love! - wasn't) and there are people in this world who don't think that alone is an incredibly obvious non-coincidence? Well, there's one born every day, as they say ...

[rjpalmer]

Isn't this where The Rule of Three comes in? That's what I go by. It's a simple rule that I don't think has ever really failed.

One is Happenstance. Two is Coincidence. Two could be more than a Coincidence but it doesn't prove it. You need Three. Two is not enough for proof. That's why I always said it could just be a coincidence, same as RJ. Until I found out the third thing that sealed the deal for me.

Ike's Three is, I believe, the players for One and Two probably going to the same pub at the same time--one going there every school day, and one living close to it, and knocking off work early that day. That didn't do it for me. I had to have a better factor to make Three or "Enemy Action".

Hi Lombro--

As I said, it's time to pull the plug on Ike's irrelevant and bizarre number crunching. It's possible that a few rubes will gape their mouths in wonder and be taken in by it, but I'm confident any intelligent person will see through it.

To understand Ike's folly, one only needs to conduct a similar exercise with any two random events that we know are not related. One would come up with similarly astronomical odds, but they would be similarly worthless.

For instance:

A man in Sunderland grabs his chest and falls to the sidewalk dead.

At the exact same moment, a public statue falls over on the next street over.

What are the odds?

Some deluded soul can crunch the numbers by calculating how often people fall down from heart attacks in Sunderland and how often public statues topple to the ground and come up with some meaningless astronomical odds--say 87,000 to 1--and shriek out EUREKA! THE PROBABILITIES ARE TOO IMPROBABLE FOR THE TWO EVENTS NOT TO BE RELATED---but all that has happened is that this self-deluded statistician has deluded himself.

In Ike's case, it's even worse than that, because he's decided to count backwards to the day Maybrick died--which is adding a further irrelevancy into the equation.

Millions of events happen at every moment. In this case, Barrett called a literary agent. He could have been calling literary agents every day for weeks. Indeed, according to Maurice Chittenden, Barrett had been pimping the diary to publishers for months before he got a nibble. We weren't there, so we don't really know.

The same day, Dodd was having some work done on his house. That's it.

It's not a wild coincidence unless one injects their imagination. People have work done on their houses. One can crunch numbers and come up with a meaningless set of odds, but it tells us exactly ZERO about whether Eddie Lyons found a diary and sold it to Mike Barrett.

As for your "rule of three"...

Bear in mind that Eddie may well have been singled out BECAUSE he sometimes drank at the same pub as Barrett.

Indeed, we are told that Rhodes specifically asked his employees if anyone did so, (two admitted they did) so that mental link to Barrett had already been made.

Based on this, it was theorized that Eddie might have worked in Battlecrease that day. The time sheets don't actually put him there--he was there later that summer.

In fact, no one seems to know where Eddie was working over the next few weeks. His old job started back up, but he wasn't there, either.

The conversation is drifting sideways, though, so I'm out.

I was more interested in hearing why--if Barrett got the diary down the pub--Anne Graham led everyone on a wild goose chase for years.

There's no rational reason she would have done so and praising her dishonesty (as Ike has done four time now) does not cut the mustard with me.

[Geddy2112]

A man in Sunderland grabs his chest and falls to the sidewalk dead.

I swear to good Godley & Cream if I fall down dead today I'm coming back to haunt the shi*e out of you..

[John Wheat]

Yet, you still feel the need to read and comment.

Its still true its a fake though.

[rjpalmer]

I swear to good Godley & Cream if I fall down dead today I'm coming back to haunt the shi*e out of you..

Oh, dang. Sorry.

Let me rephrase that. "If a man falls down dead in Chicago..."

[Geddy2112]

Oh, dang. Sorry.

Let me rephrase that. "If a man falls down dead in Chicago..."

Haha... no worries.

Sorry I've been away from this board for a fair few years and still catching up. To save me going back over 720 odd pages, do some people still think the Maybrick Dairy is genuine and thus Maybrick was JtR? I thought it was 'proven' years ago the book was almost certainly a fake. Confused...

[StevenOwl]

Sorry I've been away from this board for a fair few years and still catching up. To save me going back over 720 odd pages, do some people still think the Maybrick Dairy is genuine and thus Maybrick was JtR? I thought it was 'proven' years ago the book was almost certainly a fake. Confused...

Nope - 31 years on and still nobody has found a single piece of evidence which 100% proves the scrapbook was a modern fake.

[rjpalmer]

Haha... no worries.

Sorry I've been away from this board for a fair few years and still catching up. To save me going back over 720 odd pages, do some people still think the Maybrick Dairy is genuine and thus Maybrick was JtR? I thought it was 'proven' years ago the book was almost certainly a fake. Confused...

It's difficult to say why there are still believers. It's something I've pondered.

I'm no psychiatrist, but I think it must have something to do with the romantic lure of lost causes, or old-fashioned contrarianism---to swim against the current for the sheer joy of it...

...to thumb one's nose at the skeptics, or to stand in Speaker's Corner on a soapbox and announce a perpetual motion machine even though the physicists say that it cannot be done.

Maybe the world is even better for having a few such types running around. 'Inconoclast' would be in a better position to describe his motivations.

[Abby Normal]

deleted double post

[John Wheat]

Nope - 31 years on and still nobody has found a single piece of evidence which 100% proves the scrapbook was a modern fake.

Considering the Provenance of the Diary. It needs to be proven to be the real deal though. Not the other way around.

[Abby Normal]

Considering the Provenance of the Diary. It needs to be proven to be the real deal though. Not the other way around.

pick a provenance any provenance! its got at least three lol