From jcowan@reutershealth.com Wed Sep 18 09:58:28 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_1_1_3); 18 Sep 2002 16:58:28 -0000 Received: (qmail 16281 invoked from network); 18 Sep 2002 16:58:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m11.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 18 Sep 2002 16:58:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail2.reutershealth.com) (65.246.141.151) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 18 Sep 2002 16:58:27 -0000 Received: from skunk.reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[10.65.117.21]) by mail2.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with SMTP id NAA15574 for ; Wed, 18 Sep 2002 13:09:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: by skunk.reutershealth.com (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Wed, 18 Sep 2002 12:58:24 -0400 Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 12:58:24 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: carolingianosity Message-ID: <20020918125824.I1238@skunk.reutershealth.com> References: <200209172146.RAA06165@mail2.reutershealth.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de on Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 07:03:36AM -0000 From: John Cowan X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=8122456 X-Yahoo-Profile: john_w_cowan On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 07:03:36AM -0000, A.W.T. wrote: > I heard about this idea, maybe this is even true ;-) Naturally I stupidly forgot to include the URL: http://www.oz.net/~lee/Genealogy/charlemagne.html The argument in brief is that Charlemagne was about 40 generations back (and is known to have living descendants, so his line has not died out), so I have about 2^39 ~~ 10^12 male ancestors from his time. However, the male European population was only about 15 million, so there is a great deal of convergence. The probability that any one of those 2^40 possible male ancestors is *not* Charlemagne is about 1 - 1/1.5e8, or .0.999999933. But the probability that *all* of them are not Charlemagne is vanishingly small: 0.999999933 ^ (2^39), or about 1e-15000. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. --The Hobbit