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Concerning the author's published study of the Theomatic factor 90 as noted in references to either one of the sons in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), the author states, "The
odds, after the most conservative exhaustion of every single mathematical possibility, is 261 million to one." He states further, "I think you will find it convincing and totally impregnable to any significant rebuttal." This is an incredibly bold statement, in our opinion -- daring ... sensational in every respect. With this claim the author inspires and challenges the honest skeptic to consider the staggering statistical
probability of Theomatics occurring randomly as evidence that it is designed by God. The author publishes (Lk15, pp. 46-48) that the unusual event being considered occurred as follows:
The author observed 46 successes, "hits" (H) where a phrase sum was (more or less) divisible by 90, in a sample (S
) of 765 phrases of at most 4-words in length (L). The probability (P) of this event occurring randomly is .3115; odds (1:N) are 1:3. Of these 765
phrases, there were 467 phrases of 3-words or less, of which 39 were successes: odds are 1:123. Of these 467 phrases, there were 226 phrases of two words or less, of which 25
were successful Theomatics events: odds are 1:1135. It would seem that the probability of the above events considered separately, as the author presents them, are quite mild in light of the boldness of the author's claim. The unusual statistical significance claimed by the author is derived from a rather surprising maneuver: he does not present an analysis of the phenomenon that he actually observed, but
an analysis of a phenomenon that he thinks he "could have" observed. Concerning this, the author states: "Theomatics discovered a total of 46 hits of 2.37 WLA.
There are 434 possible phrase combinations with the same 2.37 WLA (the number pool) from which Theomatics could have (emphasis mine) derived its data. Our objective here is
to find out what the probability is of finding 46 hits out of a number pool of 434 numbers." (Lk15, p.37) He states further: "Calculating the probability according to the length of the phrase -- matching the WLA
of both the Theomatic hits and the 434 number pool -- is a totally fair, honest, and objective way to figure the p-value." (p. 44)
In other words, rather than determining the probability of the event that occurred ... the Theomatic event that he has actually observed, the author feels it is necessary to do a little
bit of a "face lift" on his data by changing the size of each sample that he actually observed to a smaller size that he feels "could have" been the size of the sample observed, based upon the Word Length Average (WLA
, the average number of words per phrase, which is the total number of words in all of the phrases divided by the number of phrases) of the phrases involved in the event. His basic hypothesis is that the WLA
of the sample is not generally expected to exceed the WLA of the hits obtained from it: he expects the sample WLA to be less than the value of the hit WLA
on average. Since the event the author actually observed does not meet this expectation, and since he is certain that it should have, "could have," he simply fixes the
sample sizes to match his hypothesis, removing longer phrases from the sample until its WLA matches that of the hits. In doing so, the author does not consider the quality of the sample elements themselves,
considering whether certain phrases should be considered in the sample or not due to their inherent individual properties, or whether certain "hits" should be considered or not based
upon some objective criteria, as would normally be the approach of a statistician in constructing a representative sample with which to work. Instead, the author presumes to
understand the inherent nature of the Theomatic phenomenon in such manner as to have legitimate liberty to adjust the sample size theoretically, based upon his knowledge of how
Theomatics generally operates and the tendencies he has observed in it over time. In this manner, he actually imagines an hypothetical event that he feels he very likely "could have"
observed, and which he presumably feels he normally would have observed if this particular event had occurred in a manner consistent with his Theomatic knowledge.
Since the event did not occur the way he expected it to, the author therefore takes the liberty to reduce the sample size of the 4-word phrases from 765 to 434, and reduces the
samples of the 3-word and 2-word phrases similarly. He considers this new set of sample sizes, "par for the course," stating that it is now possible for him to accurately test his
hypothesis that God designed Theomatics against the null hypothesis of randomness (p. 35, emphasis his): "This figure of 434 now constitutes the number pool -- it will now give
us an accurate comparison of Theomatics against the null hypothesis -- and enable us to come up with an accurate p factor."
Evidently, the author is convinced that the event that he actually observed would not enable him to come up with an accurate p-value for Theomatics in this particular case, even though
it is (apparently) one of the most outstanding and intuitively appealing Theomatic events he has at his disposal to present. Consequently, he actually bases his bold assertion of
incredible statistical significance on the following results, based on an imaginary event... that "could have" occurred.
These results are used in subsequent analyses of other aspects of the same Luke 15 event to arrive at the final "most conservative" odds of 1:261 million in the author's incredible public claim. They are the probabilities of random occurrence of three aspects of an hypothetical event that the author has imagined . This event did not actually occur; it has never been observed... by anyone.
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