The gunslinger fallacy

[Jacob(smooth)]

Thought I'd share an illustration of this, which is germane to the thread on numerology and lots of other stuff.

Ancient man had his own form of 'sat nav' that helped him find his way across Britain, according to new research.
The sophisticated geometric system was based on a stone circle markers.
Our ancestors were able to travel between settlements with pinpoint accuracy thanks to a complex network of hilltop monuments.

These covered much of southern England and Wales and included now famous landmarks such as Stonehenge and The Mount.

Researcher Tom Brooks analysed 1,500 prehistoric monuments, including Stonehenge and Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, and found them all to be on a grid of isosceles triangles - those with two sides of equal length - each pointing to the next site.

He believes this proves there were keen mathematicians among the ancient Britons 5,000-6,000 years ago, at least two millennia before the Greeks who were supposed to have discovered geometry.

Many monuments are 250 miles or more away but GPS co-ordinates now show all are accurate to within 100 metres and provided a simple map for ancient Britons to follow.

Incredibly, the triangles still exist today as many medieval churches, abbeys and cathedrals were constructed on top of the original stone circle markers.
'Such is the mathematical precision that it is inconceivable that this work could have been carried out by the primitive indigenous culture we have always associated with such structures.

'Such patterns could only have been the work of highly intelligent surveyors and planners which throws into question all previous claims as to the origin of mathematics.

Quite a compelling pattern! Inconceivable that it could be a co-incidence. Could even be ancient aliens...

The response to this came from A proper mathmetician, tom brooks form the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London. He has applied the same techniques used by Brooks to another mysterious and lost civilisation. Namely, the "woolthworths" chain of shops (now defunct). I have such a nerd boner for this guy!

"We know so little about the ancient Woolworths stores," he explains, "but we do still know their locations. I thought that if we analysed the sites we could learn more about what life was like in 2008 and how these people went about buying cheap kitchen accessories and discount CDs."

The results revealed an exact and precise geometric placement of the Woolworths locations.

"Three stores around Birmingham formed an exact equilateral triangle (Wolverhampton, Lichfield and Birmingham stores) and if the base of the triangle is extended, it forms a 173.8 mile line linking the Conwy and Luton stores. Despite the 173.8 mile distance involved, the Conwy Woolworths store is only 40 feet off the exact line and the Luton site is within 30 feet. All four stores align with an accuracy of 0.05%."

Parker used an ancient technique: he found his patterns in 800 ex-Woolworths locations by "skipping over the vast majority, and only choosing the few that happen to line up".

With 1,500 locations, Brooks had almost twice as much data to work with, and on this issue Parker is clear: "It is extremely important to look at how much data people are using to support an argument. For example, the case for global warming covers vast amounts of comprehensive evidence, but it is still possible for people to search through the data and find a few isolated examples that appear to show otherwise.

So there you go. That's the gunslinger fallacy. If you look at a large enough collection of data, of course you are going to find some patterns. To extrapolate from that that there is a guiding intelligence is, well, unintelligent.