--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, jpahk <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> if this team is dominating enough in its specialty areas to win four
> games, they must be answering about 1/4 to 1/3 of the questions, or
> at least 5 or 6 tossups per game. so that's about 70 bonuses they've
> been asked in this hypothetical tournament, and you are saying that
> they "happen" to get all bonuses in the roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of
> subjects where they have very deep knowledge? the odds against this
> are astronomical. (in fact, astronomy itself doesn't come close to
> having numbers this outrageous; the age of the universe is only on
> the order of 10^17 seconds). even the odds of 2/3 or more of their 70
> bonuses being right up their alley are vanishingly small.
Hmm--statistical mechanics often gives numbers on that order of
magnitude; however, "astronomical" seems so much cooler a phrase to
describe long odds compared to "statistical mechanical." :-)
--AEI