Dave, thanks for those posts. They say it all. And when you referred to "raw" incidences in your post, it reminded me of the time Bill McReynolds said the kidnapping of their daughter and her friend 22 years to the exact date of JonBenet's death was just a "raw" co-incidence.
Interesting.

AvidReader
49. "RE: Raw Incidences/Raw Co-incidences"

I remember reading about McReynolds writing something entitled "How to Fake It".
I am at work but I am sure someone is familiar with this.
Evening2

50. "RE: Raw Incidences/Raw Co-incidences"
Hi, AvidReader, and yes, you are correct. In one of his "obits", it says he wrote something about "How to Fake it as a Critic or Movie Critic" (not sure of the exact title).

Evening2
51. "RE: Raw Incidences/Raw Co-incidences"
AvidReader,,,Here ya go:
"He was the author of numerous papers, articles and book reviews, including "How to `Fake It' as a Reviewer" (1974), "The Way of the Tactless Texan" (1983) and "Theater Coverage: An Interpretation" (1982). He taught history of journalism, critical writing for the journalist, opinion writing and mass communication and culture at the journalism school.
AvidReader
52. "RE: Raw Incidences/Raw Co-incidences"

For some reason I thought it may have been journalissm.

Now some think the JBR murder was committed by a man of great intelligence and education and some think by someone of bare reasoning ability, but either way: if he wraps his ligature precisely, selects the cord with care, and employs it with such gusto, do you really think his rambling 'war and peace' is going to have mistakes that were un-intentional in it?

That's pretty much how I see it. It seems thoughtfully written in order to get it as close to what the writer wanted to convey as possible. I keep trying, but I just don't see this guy as being much of a "word warrior." It reminds me of when I am trying to write something that is important, and I want to get it right. I can almost see the guy sticking the pen in his mouth thinking about how to put the next line....ya think they tested the pen for DNA? Note writer seems to be intoxicated to a degree, as well. His spatial sense is off kilter. By my perception, there are too many emotional changes and conflicts in his "voice" to take the note seriously as a piece of literature meant to convey anything other than what satisfied the fantasies of the writer. Personally, I don't think he was able to get the note or the crime to completely satisfy him. He seems too conflicted about it.

55. "The data shows that"
In response to message #53

the two words with double ss's were wrong. The perp has a problem with double ss's......and if we had more of his historical handwriting, we would see he routinely gets it wrong on other words with double consonants.

I just wanted to ask you for the data which proves your declaration (stated as fact) that the perpetrator has a problem with double 's's --- other than what is in the ransom note. You cannot use those data, because you already used them to form your hypothesis. I am requesting the data that confirms your hypothesis which you stated as fact.

Also, what data do you have to prove that the perpetrator will have problems with other double consonants (also stated as fact)? Apparently you missed my previous post in which I listed many double-consonant words that were spelled correctly (in the ransom note) as well as an extensive list of potential double-consonant words which the perpetrator also spelled correctly. Both of these lists tend to disprove your claim that there will be future writings in which a double-consonant problem will be found, as shown next.

Please consider the following: if we divide the ransom note into paragraphs, then at the time when we finish reading the first paragraph, we can count that first paragraph as a "past" writing, the second and subsequent paragraphs as "future" writings. Upon seeing that first paragraph with its two errors, we would predict that other paragraphs (future writings) should have one or two errors, but they don't. This strongly contradicts your prediction. Based on these data, we should predict that future writings will have few errors. The hypothesis that future writings will contain many spelling errors is contradicted by the ransom note itself, internally.

Apparently you have other data to which the rest of us are not privy. Please do share any additional writings from the perpetrator. We are all anxiously awaiting. :-) Thanks.

You had asked previously about "foreigners" misspelling business as "bussiness." In the Google searches I did, I did not limit the searches in any way, so these hits included all pages that used the word "bussiness" as well as "business." I don't know of any way to easily distinguish between foreigners writing in English and native English speakers writing in English. You might think that one could look at the URL, but that doesn't really tell you whether or not the author speaks native English or not. In some countries, as I'm sure you know, English is virtually a native language due to its extensive use. In some countries, American business is so prevalent that I'm quite sure most who are the least bit educated can spell "business" properly. "The chief business of the American people is business." (Calvin Coolidge as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.)

Now as far as "posession" and "bussiness" together, there were several copies of a single Nigerian web site or web page that had these. The ransom note also had these two together, of course. Taking out both of those sources would have dramatically reduced the overall number, but I took out only the ransom note pages in my tally. Perhaps the Nigerians have double-consonant misspelling problems?

I would hazard to guess that there should be some differences between cultures in relative misspellings, but this is going to be highly culture dependent, and I don't think there is any way short of making a vast study to answer the question in detail. In English, there are many French words, thanks to the Normans. So we should expect strong similarities rather than differences. The Oriental languages use a completely different character set, so who knows? But I would think that most who took the time to create web pages to converse in English could spell common words fairly well. I myself use cross-language dictionaries extensively when composing in French or German, so I usually get the spellings correctly --- because I'm afraid of a complete misunderstanding if I don't. I might accidentally have an unintentional expletive or insult included! Nor would I want to compliment (Edited: here I mean X-rated) someone by mistake. :-)

"benet" means exorcist I guess (in French or whatever - I got from the Internet), so was one misspelling trying to point to another and the writer's intent or thought patterns? I always wondered about "posession" by itself, but when I happened to come across the benet = exorcist, it piqued my mind again.

also interesting thought about "buss" = square sails (sailors tie knots). The way that the knot was tied with JonBenet's hair entangled is also intriguing. Was it just an accident as the perp struggled? What about the stun gun? With the hair entangled it is obvious that the garrot was not prepared before hand, but during a struggle. Why not before hand?

I don't see any point in deliberately misspelling two words---when the writer of the note made a point of changing the misspelling in "denied"---and didn't have misspellings interspersed throughout the note. If he wanted to dummy down, he didn't do a good job of it.

In the data you presented, it doesn't show how the same people that misspell business or possession, also spell other words. You give a bunch of samples, but they're not by the same person.

I am reminded of another thread suggesting that the possible date of Jack The Ripper's first murder took place on the day and month of JonBenet's birth. I thought the association was possible from the standpoint of the perp being a student of true crime and possibly being obsessed (or is it obssesed?) with the Ramsey family.

Another poster thought this was so unlikely as to be ridiculous, posting statistics to prove hir point. The counterpoint to this, if I remember correctly, which I thought was true and germaine to this thread, was that the killer was not a member of a neat statistical set of the population as a whole but had their own unique mental state, thought processes and so on, like DB's illustration of a perp reacting to something inane like a person stepping on a crack. It might not make sense to us but might make perfect sense to a malfunctioning crimnal mind.

This perp, for whatever reason, may have a unique problem with these two words, despite the apparent odds being against it. If that were true it would amount to a very significant clue. It is the kind of thing that a thorough person like Smit might find helpful.

On the matter of misspelling denied: the perp may be faking this mistake/correction or it may simply be that he did realize his mistake and corrected it while he isn't aware he misspelled Bussness and poseshion, ah, busisnes and posesion, ah, nevermind.

But if I believe he made the mistakes intentionally, I have to ask myself, whY? I don't really have an answer for that. I don't buy the dumbing down explanation.

One other thing to consider, I think, is that the person who wrote the note was copying someone else's writing/note/composition. This might put some variables into the mix that the spelling data don't address.

Thanks for your response. Of course, I was disappointed not to see other writings by the perpetrator :-( . But perhaps he does keep a journal as Slapfish has suggested and we'll know the true, true answer some day. You're correct to say that this cannot be completely decided by analysis --- only examination of the perpetrator's writings will tell us for sure.

The question is, though, with limited information, limited time, and limited resources, where should we look? This is the kind of thing that statistical analysis was designed for and is very good at answering. Based on the limited data available, including that which I have provided in this thread AND the ransom note itself, the answer currently is: Don't particularly look at suspects who cannot spell very well, even though two words in the ransom note were misspelled. That is what the information and analysis are telling us.

Now if someone wants to disagree and say that they BELIEVE that the suspect is someone who cannot spell very well, that's fine. But it is simply FALSE that the currently available information is saying that. It says the opposite. To search for someone who cannot spell very well at this current time is opposing the currently best available information. This state of affairs can certainly change, however.

Now if there were other information, such as that all perpetrators who use garrotes are bad spellers, this would be additional information that would negate the analysis I've done or simply reduce it to irrelevancy. However, I don't believe that any such information such as this is available, which is why I asked for your data. It seems to me that you have some other reasons for wanting to believe that the perpetrator is a bad speller. Do you want him to be someone without much formal education for some reason? Would that make you feel safer? Or do you believe that any viable candidate must have some basic intellectual deficiency? I'm not aware of any evidence of such connections myself. If you have any other overriding information, I'd really like to know about it, and I'm sure everyone else would, also. What you've posted so far is merely denigration of statistical analysis in general and misplaced attacks ("Statistics lie... You can't apply...").

We would all like to have oodles and oodles of the killer's handwriting so we could find out if he is really a bad speller or not.
One of my, at times, favorite suspects has excellent writing skills. I'm reminded of the very old parlor game that involved a set of clues, one being a threatening note which had a great many grammatical errors and misspellings, but which also made proper use of a set of quotation marks. The correct conclusion all the guests were supposed to reach is that the quotation marks indicated his actual ability and all the rest was pure disguise.

>Don't particularly look at suspects who cannot spell very
>well, even though two words in the ransom note were
>misspelled. That is what the information and analysis are telling us.
>Now if someone wants to disagree and say that they BELIEVE
>that the suspect is someone who cannot spell very well, that's fine.
Ah, now we come to the real problem. Belief. For some of us it more comfortable to adopt a certain belief, irrespective of the available data. Often when data is very noisy and highly censored, its hard to make a decision and sometimes simple preferences for one option or another are perfectly reasonable concerns.

>Do you want him to be someone without much formal education for some reason?
>Or do you believe that any viable candidate must have
>some basic intellectual deficiency?
Here again, this is often just that ... a 'want'. Someone is more comfortable with this being someone who is 'sick' or 'impulsive' or 'evil' or 'a loser'. For some of these things there may even be some sort of evidence available, but often its really a matter of personal choice.

Or, was it parentheses?

I agree that it's possible that the perpetrator may have some particular problem with only 's's. However, as I mentioned in another post on this thread, that wouldn't be the most efficient place to look. It's more likely that something else is going on.

You may recall that I was the one who raised the Jack-the-Ripper coincidence. I merely asked if anyone had thought of this, and a couple of people jumped all over me. I didn't say I believed it, just asked if anyone had considered it. It would be like asking, "Has anyone ever considered that the perpetrator may be a bad speller?" then have someone jump on them, saying that it was a ridiculous notion. (By the way, I never said that.) If no one had asked the question previously, it would have been a good thing to look at. Now that we've looked, we see that the available information seems to point to another reason for the misspellings other than a spelling problem. So what is that other reason? That's what we should be looking at. And we should be looking for someone who spells adequately well, not for a bad speller.

I like the way Don expressed "toying with the investigators." I currently regard the entire note as being something closely akin to that. So it's a merely a subset to toy with the investigators using misspellings --- making a ridiculous misspelling, then making it obvious (at least to some of us) that this is what he is doing by making another one in the opposite manner than he just did. I think he's saying, "You guys are looking for misspellings, right? Well, here's one. Now you might think it's a fake, right? Well, here's another misspelling. Ha-ha. The answer is obvious, right? I'm smarter than you think. Catch me if you can!" I believe that he's trying to show the investigators that he understands perfectly well how they will try to use the note to understand how he thinks --- but that he's too complex for them to be able to do that. Little did he know that ST would come along and completely underwhelm everyone.

I think that the perpetrator's whole message (i.e. the ransom note) was far too obtuse. That is probably one of his strongest personality traits. He tells idiotic jokes, bores women to tears, etc. That may be why he chose a beautiful little girl. Perhaps he knew that she would grow up to be someone who couldn't stand him. Apparently, though, JonBenét had a big enough heart with perhaps even enough room for this particular weasel --- at least for a while.

Anyway......I think it's more likely the perp fits into a profile of KNOWN sickos that have entered homes...sexually assaulted and murdered a child....so if he can or cannot spell still doesn't point to the person. The DNA, (if it wasn't planted, but that would be a smart(er) perp)is the only thing that will point to who it is.

I was being a bit facetious about the statistical analysis. Sorry about that. Perhaps the professor wanted to get our attention, but the first thing he told us was statistics lie, and spent two semesters showing us why. I don't know how you fit in unique behavior characteristics or idiosyncracies in the equation.
Gotta run--back in a week...only 20 minutes to pack now!

On the other hand...."pick-up" is exactly what John did...he picked his murdered child up off of the dirty basement floor.

And no, first having written delivery was not a mistake; it too was intentional. Just more fun than using pick-up initially. Ho, Ho, Ho, he even said in the note she was going to have to be picked up.

And, interestingly, Maikai, regarding your trip to Michigan, very close to Frankenmuth, is a Vicki McReynolds who is employed by Booth Newspapers. The McReynolds are said to have three daughters: Jill, Jo, and Vicki.

Like Maikai, we've packed the household and moving. Hopefully before I get back on line you will all have it figured out (with some proof to boot).

Still puzzled,
Terrance.

Yes, many killers like to taunt LE. Seems to prove to them that they are superior/bolsters their innate feelings of inadequacy. Bundy didn't taunt, but he did ride right through a crime scene and picked up a piece of evidence. Zodiak did it with notes, the Ripper also used the mail, and in British Columbia, Shane Dubow called the police from five different phone booths thumbing his nose at them.

Rainsong

As Rainsong has pointed out, many infamous killers have taunted law enforcment in various ways. The Zodiac appears to have stopped after realizing that the investigators may find his taunts more productive and revealing than he wished. That is the most likely explanation I can think of as to why there hasn't been anything else --- that we are aware of. Perhaps he learned the lessons of Zodiac early on. (Or perhaps he is Zodiac?)

Regarding statistics courses: There is a big difference between statistics courses and analyzing data in real experiments. One of the unfortunate side effects of statistics courses seems to be that many students memorize certain things they read in textbooks, but forget the conditions. For example, I have heard "Three samples is not enough for statistical analysis." This is not correct. Surprised? It's a long story. "Thirty-five samples is enough for hypothesis testing." Not always true. "Most distributions in nature are Gaussian." Again, false. And so on. In other words, a lot of myths appear to be circulating thanks to statistics classes in which the students forgot a lot of the conditions on various conclusions, and recall only the results, thinking that they are universal. It's probably safe to say that there are no universal truths in statistics. I believe that a lot of the problems with statistical analyses come from the lack of a true understanding of statistics. It is very treacherous terrain, and many souls have been lost. The casualty rate is very high. Every time I hear someone say, "You can't do this or that," I think, "Oh great! Another victim of a class in elementary statistics who now regards themselves as a statistician." I wish there was a mandatory lab to go along with these classes. I think that would help a lot. I'm not faulting the students, but the instructors of these courses.

Statistics don't lie, people do. Long ago there was a book called Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. (Sory I canot find a propper refferrence.) In this book, the author tried to demonstrate how people lie using statistics. However, some of his examples are false accusations. This author has a very peculiar set of requirements for the presentation of data which often obscures what the presenter is trying to show. Yes, certain salespersons do use the techniques to misrepresent products, but this doesn't make everyone who uses the technique a liar. For example, many times axes on graphs are edited so that the comparison of data points is more easily accomplished. The author assumes that the reader is intelligent enough to realize that part of the axes may be missing. It's clearly indicated! The author of this book calls this technique a "lie." I think that this author must not have done much research himself. He would have run into criticism from the other end --- such as that it was impossible to see the differences of the various data points on a graph. Small differences sometimes do matter. And so on. Although I was impressed when I first saw this book, I was very unimpressed later on after I had myself done much research and read many research papers.

Sometimes its not a matter of 'lie' as in the Tufte work which shows several ways to represent the famed Broad Street Pump Handle data. In many of the depictions, the message is clearly lost to the viewer.
Or the Shuttle Launch Disaster which was based largely on the desire to use a 'politically correct' logo as a data depiction device.

Most of our 'statistics' are often derived from advocacy documents rather than neutral sources. Simpson's Paradox is often used so data will be presented about 'people' when it suits them and about 'males' and 'females' when it suits them. Even though the numbers are the same, the conclusions will be different.

I think we are all pretty much in agreement that the note was not some actual attempt to otain a ransom. It was something to toy with the parents emotions for awhile and to toy with the cops too.
In the same vein, the use of the rather insignificant piece of tape on the mouth seems not to have been to suppress screams but to foster a false hope upon eventual discovery of the corpse. Hopes raised by the tape, then cruely dashed.

Anyone who so carefully thought out the details of the note and the tape, surely made those spelling 'mistakes' intentionally. And quite frankly, I think the choice of the soft tip felt pen was no accident either. They guy knew what he was doing. He knew his craft.

Anyway, Dave, the same facility that helped me with my hy-phenating problem has a proggram for people who have trouble with doubble consonates. You might want to checkk into it?

Another possibility for changing "delivery" to "pick up" could be if the writer was copying from a "master note". What one person might write, when read by another person, jumps out to them as not being quite what is intended. So, when the second writer saw "delivery", he realized that the intention was NOT to "deliver" her but to have John pick her up.

Having the note written by two writers could also account for the misspellings. One might have corrected the other wrongly and even have made some corrections that were "correct". In the end, the note becomes the product of the person doing the copying.

Just some points to ponder...

You and I have caused a question to be raised: Were your hyphenation errors and my double-consonant spelling errors intentional or unintentional? If we don't actually say, how is one to determine which is the case? ESP? Meditation?

It may be none of my bussiness but the world seems to be changing.

If y'all ever have any questions on grammar--I know a proofreader who gets seriously out of sorts everytime they change acceptable word spellings....

Rainsong--starting to feel like I'm in the middle of an Abbott and Costello routine. Next thing ya know, you two will be doing "Who's on First."

About being denied...a good observation. Makes me think the writer copied from another source and was in a hurry.

"Makes me think the writer copied from another source and was in a hurry."

Yes. In particular the crossing out of "delivery" and substitution of "pick-up" is suggestive of that. Some think that this may have been an intentional error. Could be. But note that he had just written "an earlier delivery of the money" and was now writing almost the same thing on a new page. He could have easily lost his place and written "a (sic) earlier delivery --- oops! --- lost my place ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H pick-up...."

Note that this correction is also the advisable thing to do. Just previous to the correction (and even though he just wrote "we might call you" where John is the object), he is implying that John is the subject carrying out the delivery of the money. It would be an abrupt switch to the perpetrator or accomplices as subject carrying out the action to say "delivery of your daughter." It could be argued that, as a grammatical construction, this would be confusing. It's interesting that he went to this extent to make such a correction. I would think that a lot of people wouldn't even notice that it is technically advisable to do this to avoid confusion as to who is supposed to do what, even though in this particular case it's perfectly obvious who has the money and who supposedly has JonBenét. So why did he bother? Probably because it's one of his personality traits.

Suppose he is a writer of some kind and is more aware of correct grammerical structure? More liberal arts than engineer?

I remember having an AH HA moment once while studying the note. I thought he was copying from something he had written earlier. My impression is that he did do a practice note or two until he got it as close to what he wanted given a time constraint. I thought it interesting that right after writing this, he seemed to have become more hostile.

The note is an odd one. There are elements of organization as well as disorganization. The crime is the same way. It seems like the basic plan of abducting and killing the child was unalterable for him, but he also wasn't very stable emotionally and could have ad-libbed as he went.

It is evident within this thread the many ways that statistics can be used for advocacy or can be done incorrectly (as Dave has shown in this thread and the first addition/subtraction thread). Far too many "statistics" are used inappropriately by those who do not know HOW to apply proper statistical data. Someone with a high school or entry level University/college statistics class is not likely to be someone who will provide adequate consideration of the data. Statistics, done properly and for the right reasons, can be helpful.

Dave and Braveheart, you have coaxed me into believing the mis-spelled words MAY have been intentional (I'm falling off the fence).

"Someone with a high school or entry level University/college statistics class is not likely to be someone who will provide adequate consideration of the data."

Exactly. I believe that this is one of those areas in which "a little knowledge is dangerous." There have been numerous occasions during my professional career in which I have had problems with people who have developed a working knowledge only to this level.

The worst case I ever experienced was in a meeting with several very accomplished people --- I'm talking about a roomful of Ph.D.'s with vast research experience behind them. One engineer was asking if there was a problem with his approach in use of statistics to make a prediction about a future product. There was indeed an obvious problem which I picked up on during his presentation. I asked for a particular overhead to be put back on the projector. I asked the whole group, "Doesn't anyone think that this (overhead) shows a problem?" Nope! Nobody had a problem with it at all.

This overhead showed a composite of CURRENT products which, when considered altogether, comprised the future product. This overhead showed that the composite would be successful. His statistical prediction was that it would be a failure! The composite was an experimental refutation of what he had calculated, but no one except me realized it. I was just flabbergasted that no one else understood that this composite was the SAME as a sample of a future product. This composite had certain characteristics which the engineer's calculations showed would be extremely, extremely unlikely Later I determined that this engineer had neglected to scale his sigma's (sample standard deviations) to scale up from the current product to the future product. It was a subtle error, one that is easily overlooked in practice, even though the mathematical dependence of sigma on sample size is in all the textbooks.

You are exactly correct, Margoo. The successful application of statistics in the real world requires knowledge and experience far beyond an introductory course in the subject. When correctly used, statistics can be of enormous value in pointing out the most likely paths to success, where best to spend scant resources, where it probably won't pay to look for solutions, and so on.

Most of our 'statistics' are often derived from advocacy documents rather than neutral sources. Simpson's Paradox is often used so data will be presented about 'people' when it suits them and about 'males' and 'females' when it suits them. Even though the numbers are the same, the conclusions will be different. .... "

>>Exactly. I believe that this is one of those areas in which
>>"a little knowledge is dangerous."

>You are exactly correct, Margoo. The successful application
>of statistics in the real world requires knowledge and
>experience far beyond an introductory course in the subject.

And how many people really have sufficient training in statistics to even see through the usual malarkey from politicians or lawyers who create Environmental Impact Statements. And ofcourse cops don't know anything about statistics, they only pretend to. Things like the Aisenberg home invasion to steal a baby? You are already dealing with a very rare event when you consider women who walk into hospital nurseries. "Statistics" can be a downright dangerous tool in the hands of those who really do not understand it at all. One common example is the five separate 'interventions' for breast cancer treatment and after the audience has 'allocated funds amongst those five options' some of them can't believe that all those seemingly different numbers were all the exact same thing. And the 'audience' in this situation is often composed of doctors and lawyers who do not consider themselves to be ignorant of statistics.

You're exactly right. I couldn't agree more.

Over the years I have had several conversations with doctors, one of whom could basically quote results out of her textbook, who hadn't the vaguest idea what they were talking about. Their statistical reasoning abilities lead me to believe that medical doctors, although they may be able to quote results verbatim from papers, usually have very little statistical reasoning ability.

One of two bad examples: A surgeon was telling me how a 1% chance of complications for a particular procedure was very small, and that 10% of those who had complications ended up either dying or suffering severely; then he turned around and advised me to get this procedure every year for the next several years, very possibly for the rest of my life, starting at age 35. The full-treatment program would have resulted in an overall risk of complications of 40% (one minus 0.99 to the 50th power) with an overall risk of 5% (one minus 0.999 to the 50th power) of fatality or severe complications. Needless to say, I opted for a less frequent schedule to knock that exponent down to something more reasonable compared to the risk of what I was supposedly preventing. Medical research since then has confirmed that a much less aggressive schedule is recommended.

This doctor was doing what I was referring to earlier about simply quoting statistics. His statistical reasoning ability was obviously nil or was clouded by financial concerns.

A second bad example is more complicated and involves false positives, false negatives, confirmation, etc. and a clueless doctor who prescribed drugs that were known to be mutagenic, therefore possibly carcinogenic. The ultimate result of this story was that a false positive was missed by a lab. The results should have been confirmed by the clueless doctor because of the known unreliability of the lab test, but they weren't.

"First do no harm." Ha.