To The Daily Telegraph
Dear Comment:
While he's quite right about the fallacy of affirming the consequent—which
seems to inform most policy-making, not just BSE policy—perhaps Dr Ridley
will turn his attention in a future article to a null hypothesis rather than
an alternative theory of causation.
Quaere: Is new variant CJD the same as BSE? That its pathology appears similar (in the absence of much, if any, aetiological evidence) seems inadequate grounds to assume it. And: Is it an epidemic? Could it not be a rare sporadic disorder that is unchanged in its occurrence, but picked up more frequently—and now distinguished from its cousins—because of the recent research interest in prion diseases?
As for the Queniborough cluster—why not a statistical freak? If I win the
lottery, is that to be taken as evidence that I have a secret connection
with Camelot; and that they can fix it; and that they have, in my favour?
Best regards
Guy Herbert
Tuesday 18 July 2000
Tuesday 16 May 2000
Old Scatness
To The Times
Sir:
Most people with an interest in history will have been astonished by the headline (May 16) "Stonehenge left standing by Iron Age village" and the use of statements from Historic Scotland in a way that suggests Old Scatness was an Iron Age settlement in 2,500 BC. Iron wasn't much used anywhere until a thousand years later. So—if true—this would be a fabulously important discovery.
What is nowhere clearly stated in the article—but can be deduced from careful reading, combined with a little general knowledge—is that Old Scatness was already known as a site of the Iron Age (brochs being typical monuments of Iron Age Scotland), but has now been discovered to contain evidence of much, much older occupation. It is possibly comparable in age to the early phases of Stonehenge (ca.3,000 BC onwards).
Should we be congratulating The Times for giving readers an exercise in practical archaeology—letting us sift the fascinating facts from disorderly rubbish and misleading clues?
Yours faithfully
Guy Herbert
Sir:
Most people with an interest in history will have been astonished by the headline (May 16) "Stonehenge left standing by Iron Age village" and the use of statements from Historic Scotland in a way that suggests Old Scatness was an Iron Age settlement in 2,500 BC. Iron wasn't much used anywhere until a thousand years later. So—if true—this would be a fabulously important discovery.
What is nowhere clearly stated in the article—but can be deduced from careful reading, combined with a little general knowledge—is that Old Scatness was already known as a site of the Iron Age (brochs being typical monuments of Iron Age Scotland), but has now been discovered to contain evidence of much, much older occupation. It is possibly comparable in age to the early phases of Stonehenge (ca.3,000 BC onwards).
Should we be congratulating The Times for giving readers an exercise in practical archaeology—letting us sift the fascinating facts from disorderly rubbish and misleading clues?
Yours faithfully
Guy Herbert
Wednesday 29 March 2000
How long should you wait for a No.73?
To the Evening Standard
Sir:
Since I walk, mostly, I'm not an avid reader of your CommuterWatch column, but yesterday my eye lit on a paragraph about the punctuality of the No.73.
If it is true that LT estimates one should expect to wait two-and-a-half minutes for a bus scheduled to run at five minute intervals, then LT has no idea of the fundamentals of its job. I hope this is a journalistic misinterpretation. Having once temped on the seemingly pointless management reports required by LT of a bus company, I greatly fear it is not.
Because they are subject to unpredictable changes in traffic flow and passengers wishing to get on or off arbitrarily, the progress of buses along their routes is impossible to keep to timetable beyond a couple of stops. The only thing that is fixed is the time they leave the depot. So when one stands at a bus stop at random, one certainly cannot expect the bus to turn up in half the timetabled interval. Mathematically it can be shown that an average wait will be the full five minutes if services run five
minutes apart.
With the benefit of this elementary fact, one can see a four-and-a-half minute wait for the 73 isn't bad at all if, as you report, the service is supposed to be every 3-5 minutes at peak and every 5 minutes off-peak. [Actually, all it shows is that buses do leave the depots at the right intervals. Bravo!]
Trying to get city buses to run to timetable is not only futile. It is stupid. A better measure of good service is how long your journey takes--including waiting time.
What are needed are simple measures to improve the average speed of each bus over its whole route. The simplification of bus fares is good, but could be taken further with a universal, single-coin, £1 fare. Reducing the number of bus-stops (only 100 yards apart in many places) would also reduce stopping-starting. That would not just make bus travel quicker, but would reduce wear and tear on buses and drivers, cut pollution, and reduce the
delays to the rest of London's traffic.
Yours faithfully
Guy E S Herbert
Sir:
Since I walk, mostly, I'm not an avid reader of your CommuterWatch column, but yesterday my eye lit on a paragraph about the punctuality of the No.73.
If it is true that LT estimates one should expect to wait two-and-a-half minutes for a bus scheduled to run at five minute intervals, then LT has no idea of the fundamentals of its job. I hope this is a journalistic misinterpretation. Having once temped on the seemingly pointless management reports required by LT of a bus company, I greatly fear it is not.
Because they are subject to unpredictable changes in traffic flow and passengers wishing to get on or off arbitrarily, the progress of buses along their routes is impossible to keep to timetable beyond a couple of stops. The only thing that is fixed is the time they leave the depot. So when one stands at a bus stop at random, one certainly cannot expect the bus to turn up in half the timetabled interval. Mathematically it can be shown that an average wait will be the full five minutes if services run five
minutes apart.
With the benefit of this elementary fact, one can see a four-and-a-half minute wait for the 73 isn't bad at all if, as you report, the service is supposed to be every 3-5 minutes at peak and every 5 minutes off-peak. [Actually, all it shows is that buses do leave the depots at the right intervals. Bravo!]
Trying to get city buses to run to timetable is not only futile. It is stupid. A better measure of good service is how long your journey takes--including waiting time.
What are needed are simple measures to improve the average speed of each bus over its whole route. The simplification of bus fares is good, but could be taken further with a universal, single-coin, £1 fare. Reducing the number of bus-stops (only 100 yards apart in many places) would also reduce stopping-starting. That would not just make bus travel quicker, but would reduce wear and tear on buses and drivers, cut pollution, and reduce the
delays to the rest of London's traffic.
Yours faithfully
Guy E S Herbert
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