Ye Gods!

[Dobermonster]

It's all well and good to form opinions based on probabilities, but what exactly are the probabilities? Probability implies likelihood based on statistics. Quite different from simply saying something "probably" happened, which is simply an opinion based on a general impression of the scenario.

[En_Route]

It's all well and good to form opinions based on probabilities, but what exactly are the probabilities? Probability implies likelihood based on statistics. Quite different from simply saying something "probably" happened, which is simply an opinion based on a general impression of the scenario.

The point you make is astute. Would you agree that in life we regularly make predictions with varying degrees of confidence based on incomplete information.? Let's say you hear of two people you know have decided to get married. You might say there's no chance', or very little chance, that the marriage will last. You might sit on an interview panel and think candidate X is by far the likeliest to fit the bill. In this case, we have a performer from a country with a win- at - all costs mentality and a history of cheating producing an athlete like a rabbit out of the hat performing extraordinary feats in a discipline where extraordinary feats are very frequently associated with subsequent discovery of malpractice. That's pretty well all the information to hand and if course not everyone will interpret and evaluate it in identical manner. So my inference is that she is more likely than not to have obtained her results dishonestly. I imagine there are very few people who would not concede some element of doubt surrounding her performance; after that it is just a question of attaching a weight to the degree of doubt.

[Crow]

Ye Shiwen: Can statistics explain her win?

[En_Route]

Ye Shiwen: Can statistics explain her win?

Interesting article. There does seem to be a consensus that her feat was exceptional ,even extraordinary. Nobody  ever claimed what she did was literally impossible without recourse to illicit methods. The stats don't damn her absolutely but on the facts known to us I would still think that the likelihood is that she pulled a flanker. Though in the light of the most recent information I'd probably revise that probability down to a limited extent.