Why be concerned with the probability that a compact meeting of ELSs would happen by chance?

The argument goes like this. If a meeting can be shown to be likely to happen by chance, then there is a chance explanation for it. A chance explanation is one that says:

"What you found is likely to have been found if monkeys typed the text. Therefore, if you find such a meeting, there is no great delight in sharing with others because people will say that

`I also could find that one in a monkey text.' "

So if a meeting is put there deliberately by the author of the text, then the author would certainly not put it there as a meeting that has a chance explanation precisely because in that case we could not distinguish between one put there deliberately and one that occurs by chance.

On the other hand, the meetings that have a very small probability of happening by chance are not likely to be found in a monkey text. And we shall see that this makes it more likely that a monkey did not type the text.

Technical Discussion: Probability of Deliberate Meeting

Calculating probabilities associated with Torah code experiments can be difficult and messy. Some observe what they believe to be a meaningful pattern in some ELSs and wonder in amazement that it happens at all. They think the probability that such a pattern would happen by chance is infinitessimally small. More often than not their intuition is wrong. Others attempt an analytic probability calculation, and do it wrong. If you are interested in reading about these click: Calculating Probabilities