Three days. Three Denny's restaurants in California. Three shooting deaths.
All unrelated. Really.
In the words of Dr. Lucy Jones, "Random distributions, by definition, sometimes cluster, or they wouldn’t be random."
« Previous FRONT PAGE Next »
I read that story this morning and told my roomie about it. She used to eat at a Denny's in Anaheim, and I frequented one in Ontario.
Random cluster or not, I feel better than I would if I still lived back there.
But when does a cluster of random events become a pattern? I'm not suggesting that these shootings comprise a pattern, but when does a pattern actually emerge from random events?
The greater the cluster, the increased odds that there is a pattern. Until you actually find one, though ...
Note: This comment space is for discussion of the above topic, and not for unsolicited commercial links. I use SpamLookup, optional TypeKey registration, and mandatory TinyTuring text CAPTCHA to filter out comment spam. If you have technical problems with these measures, please . With or without TypeKey, you'll need to specify an e-mail address, which will not be published or otherwise abused.
Original material on this weblog is available under a Creative Commons License from
The views expressed by me on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of
my employer, my church, my party, my candidate, my community, my wife, my friends, or, on occasion, myself.
Views expressed by others are, well, theirs.