Hiya Skeleton Crew,

Sorry for the late email today. I’ve got NO EXCUSE!

Well, technically I do, technically my excuse is that I got sidetracked doin a puzzle. So I guess I mean I’ve got no GOOD excuse! But it’s kinda the same thing, eh?

Trivia 1

Apparently we got six more weeks of winter comin our way?? Ah JEEZ

Then again, I’ve heard that the woodchuck actually gets things WRONG more often ’n it gets it right: Wikipedia puts Punxsutawney Phil’s accuracy at somethin like 40%. So we’ll actually probably do better if we just flip li’l Phil’s prediction around & do the opposite of whatever he says. Good news, right?

Though a more sophisticated way to look at it would be to figure out how often Phil’s right the times that he predicted “more winter”. ’Cause ya could imagine a situation where Phil tends to screw up the “winter’s over!” predictions but is better at the “more winter!” ones. In that case, maybe we still might expect there to be six more weeks of winter, DESPITE the fact that Phil said there would be!

Does ... does that make any sense? Ah jeez, I dunno any more!!!

Anyways, if I DID try to work out the math here ... what theorem of conditional probability named after an 18th century Presbyterian minister could maybe come in handy?

Trivia 2

Tomorrow’ll be the first day of Winter Olympic competitions! So here’s a straightforward question for ya: what’s the FULL name of the Italian town that’s co-hostin these Olympics alongside Milan? (I won’t be 100% picky ’bout spellin, but ya do gotta give the WHOLE name, please & thank ya!!)