Tea at Trianon: Probability Analysis: Can This Happen by Chance?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, May 19, 2025

Probability Analysis: Can This Happen by Chance?

From Immutable Truth:

Let’s break it down.
In four election cycles — 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 — over 223 precinct-level entries in Broward County shared identical blank ballot percentages, rounded to the second decimal place (e.g., 4.74%, 6.22%, etc.).
This means that out of thousands of theoretically unique, voter-driven, organic precinct results — whole groups of precincts somehow reported the exact same blank vote rate down to 0.01%, and often repeated this in different years.
The Math Behind the Impossibility
The range of possible blank percentages (rounded to two decimal places between 0.00% and 10.00%) gives us 1,001 unique outcomes.
Let’s say 223 precincts each cast their own blank vote percentages independently. (Read more.)