Marty Demarest wrote:Carlo's recent exploration of the "Erdnase Triange," along with some interesting blog posts by Tom Sawyer (http://rulebooklets.wordpress.com) have started me thinking about coincidences.
David Alexander pointed out that at some point, endless coincidences become irrational. And I agree with him.
I also agree with many posters on this forum that many congruities between W.E. Sanders and S.W. Erdnase could be coincidences.
But no person is a series of discrete qualities. Each person is a aggregate of those qualities.
Take a sample group of every man alive in America ca. 1901. Then have those who were writers stand up. (Then everyone sit down.) Then have those who had self-publishing skills stand up. (Sit down again.) Then have those whose names have a realationship to S.W. Erdnase stand up... Etc.
Each time a different group of men would stand. Coincidences.
But if you have all the writers stand. Then ask those who don't have self-publishing skills to sit. Those whose names don't have a relationship to S.W. Erdnase sit... Etc.
You'd be left with a single group. Very, very small. Coincidence?
A coincidence is rare enough. But as coincidences aggregate, the rarity exponentiates. More than becoming irrational, it becomes unique.
Could it be that since we may have found the author, it's much easier to 'reverse engineer' the hidden anagrams and clues in the book, since we have a name to go by.