The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[whoanellie]

"And he's up there, what's that? Hawaiian noises?
He's bangin' on the bongos like a chimpanzee" Knofler/Sting Money for Nothing

still no explosion

 

[Mojo]

If you heard bangs, that might be different in quality than banging, suggesting DIY.

“Banging” suggests doing it with someone else.

 

[Vixen]

Yes, a bang is a bang.

But the question is whether a bang is an explosion. Sure, some are, but you keep saying that people who reported bangs really meant explosion.

(A bang, by the way, is also a loud noise, but not all loud noises are bangs.)

No I didn't. I quoted their exact translated words.


29 survivors can't all be wrong and/or deluded.

 

[Kid Eager]

No I didn't. I quoted their exact translated words.


29 survivors can't all be wrong and/or deluded.

... but you can be; and are. The analysis of statements upthread has already demonstrated that.

 

[Vixen]

The purpose of a conspiracy theory is not to arrive at an answer, but to keep the questions so bogged down in irrelevant controversies that they can be debated forever and support the ongoing relevance of the theorist.

Luckily this is not a conspiracy theory but a current affairs news item.

 

[Vixen]

Indeed. Twenty minutes of checking British novels netted me a fine haul of non-explosive bangs.

(Mortimer Lightwood) "had entered the army and committed a capital military offence and been tried by court martial and found guilty and had arranged his affairs and been marched out to be shot, before the door banged." -Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend.

"Soon afterwards, came a slamming and banging of doors; and then came running down stairs, a gentleman with whiskers..." -Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. These were inside doors, not susceptible to the wind.

"‘I’m sure ye did,’ replied the red-headed man, with a grin which agitated his countenance from one auricular organ to the other. Saying which he turned into the house and banged the door after him." -Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers.

"As I sat nursing these reflections, the casement behind me was banged on to the floor by a blow from the latter individual, and his black countenance looked blightingly through." - Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

"He tugged hard at his beard, and went and shut himself up in the library with a bang of the door that had a world of meaning in it." - Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone.

"He could fancy him walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room." - William Thackeray, Vanity Fair.

"Tuppy withdrew, banging the door behind him, and I put Jeeves abreast." - P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves!

"The booms were tearing at the blocks, the rudder was banging to and fro, and the whole ship creaking, groaning, and jumping like a manufactory." Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island.

""Then go home to your dinners, whoever you are; and if our children put you up to this play-acting you can tell them from me they'll catch it, so they know what to expect!" With that she did bang the door." -Edith Nesbitt, Five Children and It.

"... as for the stables, Mr. Lammeter never uses ’em—they’re out o’ all charicter—lor bless you! if you was to set the doors a-banging in ’em, it ’ud sound like thunder half o’er the parish.” - George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Silas Marner.

"The footman banged the door, the coachman touched his horses, Mrs. Werner put down the window and waved her hand, and Dolly returned to the small house all alone." - Charlotte Riddell, Mortomley's Estate.

A lot of door-slamming going on there. Of course, a ship's cabin doors slam shut so I would expect the survivors to have attributed the bangs to a door slamming, had that been the case. However, they did not.

 

[Vixen]

"And he's up there, what's that? Hawaiian noises?
He's bangin' on the bongos like a chimpanzee" Knofler/Sting Money for Nothing

still no explosion

Heh, one of the best lines ever.

 

[Vixen]

Really? Really?! You're actually serious about comparing a tuned church bell - whose shape and metal (usually bronze, not steel) has been honed and refined over centuries with the specific & sole aim of producing a sonorous ringing tone - with a ship that's made out of steel and whose design is actually predicated on not producing a tuned note when struck??

The wonders - and the abject scientific illiteracy - just keeeeeeeep on comin'

For once, you have actually made a good point (about the church bells, not anything else).

 

[phiwum]

Yes, a bang is a bang.

But the question is whether a bang is an explosion. Sure, some are, but you keep saying that people who reported bangs really meant explosion.
(A bang, by the way, is also a loud noise, but not all loud noises are bangs.)

No I didn't. I quoted their exact translated words.

29 survivors can't all be wrong and/or deluded.

Look, I could point out at least a couple of times that you've said they reported hearing explosions, but I won't bother.

As long as you are not claiming that several reported explosions, that's fine. And I'll cheerily admit that 29 survivors are not deluded when they report hearing bangs, crashes, scraping and whatever other noises were reported. Indeed, if it turns out that some did say they heard explosions (though that is not in evidence, with the possible exception of Hakanpää), I wouldn't think they are deluded, but they could of course be wrong.

Insofar as a "bang" is a description of the noise as they heard it, rather than its cause, I don't see how they could be wrong about that.

 

[Kid Eager]

Luckily this is not a conspiracy theory but a current affairs news item.

Yet here we are, the whole thread is in the Conspiracy Theory section. Congratulations.

 

[LondonJohn]

And nobody calls Big Ben chimes a bang. More of a BONG!

Jeeez, we've been through this.

Big Ben was designed and manufactured to produce a tuned note when struck at a certain point. The type of metal, the size and shape, the manufacturing process (casting, finishing. polishing) have all evolved over many centuries - with the sole purpose of maximising the audible range, sustain and harmonic purity of a tuned note.

By contrast, no metal ship in recorded history has ever been designed or built to produce a tuned note when struck. In fact (as I told you previously as well), ships are designed not to produce any significant pink-noise ringing when struck (sympathetic harmonics on a ship would potentially be a Very Bad Thing). And consequently, a ship's hull does not produce a sustained, tuned ring when it's struck - rather, it produces a harmonically-incoherent noise with almost zero sustain.


And that's why

a) we don't call a noise arising from the striking of Big Ben a "bang" (with all that this implies), instead calling it a "bong" (with all that that implies),

but

b) we don't call a noise arising from the striking of the metal hull of a ship a "bong", instead calling it a "bang".


Hope that's clear - but please let me know if you'd like any (further) clarification.

 

[LondonJohn]

The 'null hypothesis' is the scientific method, as popularised by Popper (no pun intended) and which is how one should conduct any scientific experiment. The JAIC having a foregone conclusion failed in this respect IMV.

Nope. Wrong again. The null hypothesis very specifically refers - even in its broadest definition - to something that the tester of a proposition would expect if the quantity for which she is testing had no impact upon the result of the test.

For example: suppose I was given a coin, and I was asked to test whether it was unfairly biassed in favour of landing with the head side uppermost when tossed. My test would probably entail tossing the coin something like 200 times and recording each time whether it lands on heads or tails.

Hope you're understanding this so far.

Now to the important part. In this experiment, my null hypothesis is that the coin is not unfairly biassed. This translates into a statistical null hypothesis, which in this case is that the number of heads will be very close to 50% of the total (allowing for a small allowable chance variance). If the outcome of my experiment aligns with my null hypothesis, then I can conclude that the coin is fair. But if the experiment shows that (eg) 75% of the throws came up heads, then my null hypothesis has not been observed and I can conclude that the coin is indeed biassed.


There is no "null hypothesis" condition wrt anything you're describing re the investigation into the Estonia sinking. Though perhaps you'd like to tell me what you (mistakenly) thought was the null hypothesis here.


(Oh and it's already been established that your posts in this thread demonstrate little or no understanding of the scientific method.......)

 

[LondonJohn]

For once, you have actually made a good point (about the church bells, not anything else).

I'm terrifically excited to learn that I've finally made one good point!!

 

[LondonJohn]

"And he's up there, what's that? Hawaiian noises?
He's bangin' on the bongos like a chimpanzee" Knofler/Sting Money for Nothing

still no explosion

Yes, but... now I'm thrown into all sorts of doubt when I remember Lulu's Eurovision-winning song "Boom Bang-a-Bang". Is she referring to an explosion here? Or is she perhaps referring to an explosion (The "boom" part), followed maybe by the sounds of dislodged masonry falling on vehicles (the "bang-a-bang" part)?

(Then again, it's made clear in the song that this title phrase refers solely to her own heart. And I'm sure I saw her on live TV a year or so ago - so I'm judging it unlikely that her heart actually exploded.)

 

[LondonJohn]

Yet here we are, the whole thread is in the Conspiracy Theory section. Congratulations.

Ah but the PTB probably conspired to move the thread into this section. I therefore demand a fresh inquiry into the circumstances of the thread move.

 

[Kid Eager]

Ah but the PTB probably conspired to move the thread into this section. I therefore demand a fresh inquiry into the circumstances of the thread move.

Good luck with that. It will no doubt be alleged that they are missing, having last been seen waving from an ambulance that sank under suspicious circumstances whilst crossing the street. Or something.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

No I didn't. I quoted their exact translated words.

29 survivors can't all be wrong and/or deluded.

And 29 survivors reported loud noises, but not explosions. One, in translation, did liken one loud noise to an explosion.

I'm very glad we got that settled.

 

[Vixen]

Look, I could point out at least a couple of times that you've said they reported hearing explosions, but I won't bother.

As long as you are not claiming that several reported explosions, that's fine. And I'll cheerily admit that 29 survivors are not deluded when they report hearing bangs, crashes, scraping and whatever other noises were reported. Indeed, if it turns out that some did say they heard explosions (though that is not in evidence, with the possible exception of Hakanpää), I wouldn't think they are deluded, but they could of course be wrong.

Insofar as a "bang" is a description of the noise as they heard it, rather than its cause, I don't see how they could be wrong about that.

The number of passenger survivors who heard crashes in addition to those who heard 'bangs' and/or crashes is at least 34 out of 79.

It is possible that those passengers on the lowest decks, who paradoxically seem to have got out faster than many - although those on the upper decks had a much improved probability of getting out alive - heard the bow visor 'banging on the bulkhead like a chimpanzee' as the lowest deck cabins were towards the front of the vessel. However, that doesn't prove that the bow visor fell off or came loose BEFORE the series of possible explosions (as espoused by Braidwood et al). The conclusion that the bow visor came loose/fell off because of a few strong waves - when the Baltic is a wavy sea and the designers would have allowed for this factor - is rather like claiming you crashed your car because your wing mirror came loose, as evidenced that it is lying on the ground a few metres away from the collision you were in.

 

[Vixen]

Yet here we are, the whole thread is in the Conspiracy Theory section. Congratulations.

No, congratulations to those who believe the JAIC can't be wrong and therefore the decision to reopen the investigation must be a conspiracy theory, even though it is three sovereign nations who made this decision.

 

[Vixen]

Nope. Wrong again. The null hypothesis very specifically refers - even in its broadest definition - to something that the tester of a proposition would expect if the quantity for which she is testing had no impact upon the result of the test.

For example: suppose I was given a coin, and I was asked to test whether it was unfairly biassed in favour of landing with the head side uppermost when tossed. My test would probably entail tossing the coin something like 200 times and recording each time whether it lands on heads or tails.

Hope you're understanding this so far.

Now to the important part. In this experiment, my null hypothesis is that the coin is not unfairly biassed. This translates into a statistical null hypothesis, which in this case is that the number of heads will be very close to 50% of the total (allowing for a small allowable chance variance). If the outcome of my experiment aligns with my null hypothesis, then I can conclude that the coin is fair. But if the experiment shows that (eg) 75% of the throws came up heads, then my null hypothesis has not been observed and I can conclude that the coin is indeed biassed.


There is no "null hypothesis" condition wrt anything you're describing re the investigation into the Estonia sinking. Though perhaps you'd like to tell me what you (mistakenly) thought was the null hypothesis here.


(Oh and it's already been established that your posts in this thread demonstrate little or no understanding of the scientific method.......)

I'm willing to bet I know more about this than you do, having done a couple of Institute of Statisticians diplomas and being a Bachelor of Science with Honours*, which required entry level Biology + another science (being Chemistry in my case, plus Economics thrown in) plus extensive probability theory and forecasting in my postgraduate business masters.

*This entailed a dissertation plus fifteen self-designed laboratory reports, plus
a Statistics paper in the finals.

The null hypothesis in the Estonia case ought to have been, 'We strongly suspect the bow visor falling off and seawater flooding the car deck, as in the Herald of Free Enterprise , so to test this hypothesis, we'll assume that it was NOT the bow visor falling off that was the prime cause of the accident. That is, we will investigate whether the massive hole in the starboard caused by what looks like an enormous force or the loud explosion type noises heard by 48% of the vanishingly small number of survivors around about the stroke of Swedish midnight, together with the reported blackout of radio and VHF signals, might have contributed. Only once we have eliminated these can we reject our null hypothesis that it was not the bow visor falling off because of a few strong waves.