Links to Chapter One and Chapter Two
Edmund slipped and shivered through the snow until he eventually found the Witch’s castle. It looked quite creepy, but bolstered by thoughts of Turkish Delight (oh, his Saracens – and the Scarlets were his favourite Welsh side), he crept through the imposing main gate.
He found himself in a courtyard filled with statues. They had snow settling on them, and they all looked very sad. Near the gate, there were a couple of magnificent Lions, and then he spotted a statue that looked very like Lucy’s description of Mr Iknus. There was a collection of stone rugby balls, and what looked like a few referees. (“Those referees probably deserved it,” thought Edmund.)
Suddenly, Edmund was rooted to the spot by a chilling low growl. He turned his head to find himself staring into the eyes of Maugrim, chief of the Witch’s Very Secret Police.
“Come,” said Maugrim, “Her Majesty is expecting you.”
* * *
“What!” said the Witch, not at all friendly like the last time, “Have you come alone? I told you to bring the Daughters of Maeve and the other Son of George.”
“B – b – but,” stammered Edmund, afraid of her icy stare and stern manner, “I couldn’t get them away from the Beavers. They were all talking about the return of Paulan to Narnia.”
The Queen turned even paler, if that were possible.
“Paulan!” she muttered to herself, “No, it cannot be possible. My spells are strong.”
Before Edmund knew what had happened, she had crossed the room and spear-tackled him with one strong arm. “Tell me all,” she said, preparing to drive his head into the ground.
Edmund, quaking with fear, told her all that he knew.
The Witch released him with a thump on the floor, and clapped her hands to summon her minions.
“Harness the springboks and prepare my sledge immediately! Get my dwarf! Maugrim: take the swiftest of your wolves, go to the Lodge, and kill the children and the Beavers. If they have already gone, then proceed to the Stone Stadium.”
In the twinkling of a drop goal, the sledge pulled up, driven by a dwarf who looked suspiciously like a scrum-half. Edmund was bound, and unceremoniously dumped into the bottom of the sledge. There wasn’t even any Turkish Delight.
* * *
“Susan,” said Peter, “Where’s Edmund?”
“I – I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I haven’t noticed him for a while.”
“Ah, children,” said Mr Beaver, “I’m afraid he’s gone to see the Witch. We must be on our way quickly.”
“What?”, said Lucy, “No, surely Edmund would never betray us.”
“Daughter, I’m afraid he has the look of one who is in the Witch’s favour. How long that favour lasts is another matter.
“Did anyone notice when he left? Did he hear that Paulan is on the move?”
Nobody was quite sure.
“Then we must be off at once. Mrs Beaver, please pack us up as quickly as you can.”
Mrs Beaver – for of course it’s always the females who are prepared for anything – had already got nearly everything ready for travelling. She had a pack ready for everyone, and they were off in less time than it takes to reset a scrum.
* * *
They had a long, cold and weary journey, and stopped after some hours at a safe hiding place, where they cast themselves down on the floor, covered themselves with the blankets kindly provided by Mrs Beaver, and fell asleep immediately.
They were awakened at dawn by some faint voices, which became clearer as they drew closer.
“Ho, ho ho! Go left! It’s on!”
“I’m straighter than that throw-in.”
The children rubbed the sleep from their eyes and looked in confusion at the Beavers.
“It’s Father Jiffy and Father Nige,” beamed Mr Beaver. “The Witch’s magic has kept them from Narnia for so long, but her enchantment is fading. The voices of rugby have returned to the land.” They rushed outside to find a volley of rugby balls flying through the air, and the snow at last melting.
Ovally Balls 
Ticht, by implication that means anyone that’s posted a comment on their despicable website is as well.
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Shame on you then TomP.
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Jackson to retirement
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Shame on a lot of people, ticht.
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Shame on who, shame on why?
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In sub-optimal news my spuds received frost damage last week.
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Shame on my spuds. Lazy tubers, lying in the soil and not generating sufficient warmth
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It’s OK, Stewart Lee isn’t antisemitic. Brendan O’Neil says so:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/18/in-defence-of-stewart-lee/
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Agree with O’Neil that Lee is painfully unfunny.
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Thaum – he is not as clever as he thinks he is.
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Craigs, is anyone?
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Deebs – I take your general point. Put it another way, he’s not as clever as his fans think he is either.
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Still not clear where the shame lies here.
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Always with you Chimpie. Always.
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Did you see the llama story I posted yesterday?
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Ah yes. Heroic Llamas.
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Craigs, that’s because his fans aren’t as clever as they think they are. No idea where I’m going with this, other than being a smartarse. Because I’m clever.
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May have started with a slightly larger gin than the RDA suggests as well.
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Chimpie, the cleverer comedians call it a callback. Stewart Lee, not as clever as Deebee thinks he is, will do some, but normally in the same show. Ticht is doing a callback to something that happened 6 months ago on the blog.
Ticht is better than the disgraced Stewart Lee. These days.
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Brendan O’Neil? Dear god. Well, at least I’ve found out The Fist of Fun annual burns well.
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That Tichtheid has let himself go
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@tomp
It still makes me laugh now. Everyone is wrong about something sometimes and that’s fine. But just occasionally you get an absolute corker that doesn’t merit taking seriously. And patronising Ticht while accusing him of being an anti-Semite was one of those occasions.
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OT – ayup.
Does anyone want some cwizzes? Can’t do them AoD-style, first of all because they’re not multiple choice, but even if they were, while I think I could make them look right, I do not think I can aggregate the results properly. I’d have to use the poll feature, which would just show the most popular choices. Still, something to get the leetle grey cells working?
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Because I’m clever.
Not as clever as you think you are Deebs.
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Everyone is wrong about something sometimes and that’s fine.
Not me.
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*coff coff coff* ;-)
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It’s my truth Thaum. You can’t argue with that.
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Interesting if long tweet thread…. can’t say I agree or disagree – not areas I am familiar with but interesting on effect of incentives
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@trisk
I think he’s assuming it is possible to forecast accurately, and it is only the incentives of the researchers that is preventing this. On the other hand Nassim Taleb reckons you shouldn’t even bother doing forecasts because you are almost certainly always going to be wrong, as the mean will always be higher than ~99% of the observations:
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OT – I had you in mind when I posted that…
.. and now going to having to watch yours if only to understand how 99% of values end up less than the mean ..
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@trisk
fat tails! It’s all about fat tails.
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OK, watched ….and I’m regretting I didn’t keep up with maths at school after Additional Maths ‘O’ Level (yeah, O Level, I’m that old) – trying to gen up on ‘Law of Large Numbers’, “fat tails” etc
I think I’m following it – there was an example on Wikipedia about a dice (or should that be a die?) average of a very large number of rolls ought to be 3.5 ( (1+2+3+4+5+6)/6 = 3.5).
So, if the faces were 5 x1 plus 6, the average over time ought to be 11/6 – and 5/6th of our “observations” (ie 1) are less than that…not 99% as we have a limited number of possible values but I think I’m beginning to follow it
(It may be going over my head – but i think I can see where it lands)
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I feel for you Trisk.
I’ve only got an O Level in Maths (and an OU Maths Foundation course from the late 80s), and I’m very much in the ‘wish I knew more about maths’ camp. So I decided to do a Harvard Online Course on probability ‘Fat Chance: Probability from the Ground Up’ https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:HarvardX+FC1x+1T2020/course/. It’s free (though you can donate) and it’s really good.
I’ve done 5 out of the 7 sections and I have to admit at times it’s a struggle: it’s not the calculations, which are fairly simple, it’s the way of thinking mathematically about some of the problems, of deciding which formula to use when. Sometimes I can see what they’ve done but only after they’ve explained it…
It’s fascinating though — I hadn’t realised that… But let’s do it as quiz: (NOT for OT or Larry or other maths geniuses…). This is one of the practice questions from the course:
1. 99%
2. 75%
3. 50%
4. 2%
Bonus question: name the theorem which governs this calculation.
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@trisk
A die follows a random path, so the values given will follow a normal distribution. In a normal distribution the value of the mean carries some useful information (e.g average height of males in Western Europe or something).
A fat tailed distribution is not normally distributed and the mean therefore may not carry any useful information. If the distribution is dominated by values in the tail and 99% of it fall below the mean, then the mean is not meaningful. So you have to find alternative ways of looking at the problem, as without a mean you cannot forecast.
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@brookter
I love that problem. Absolute basis of measurement science, and why you should not trust any number that doesn’t have an uncertainty attached.
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@OT,
It’s fascinating, isn’t it? It’s actually quite easy to understand the concept once it’s explained, but it took a bit for me to follow the path they got to *proving* it mathematically.
I get especially lost when they talk about cards… E.g.It seems that whenever I think I’ve understood that you calculate n choose k to choose k cards out of n, they’ll say, “as is blindingly obvious even to the numbest of numbskulls — such fools they are! — we need n^k“, and a little part of me dies and I have to spend another 3 hours working out why…
Fun though, in a masochistic way.
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There are words in these last few posts. I even understand some of them.
So I’ll do what I usually do when I see things I don’t understand….
Look! Cute animals!
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@BB,
You have 100 pupils in your school and you know that 10 of them eat books. Today ten books have been returned to the library and one of them is half eaten.
What it the probability that it was that little bastard Jones Minor whodunnit?
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@BB,
BTW, a Golden Retriever gets a mandatory pass mark. Congratulations!
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@ brookter
The astonishing thing is that the vast majority of doctors get that question wrong – they vastly overestimate the reliability of test results.
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Not giving an answer yet…trying to “show my workings”…..
So, only 1%of population is sick and test is 99% accurate.
Which sounds good but means you’ve a 1% chance of a false positive even on a healthy person and 99% of people are.
Ok, so 100 people come in for a test – 99% are well. Equally, 99 of them get a true reading . I’m thinking 1% are sick and test +ve, 1% are sick and don’t test +ve. So, you’ve 2 in 100 who are sick – so 2% chance
(I won’t be publishing this “proof”!)
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@trisk
How many positive tests will you get if you test 100 people?
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ah……..wait….. so I’ll get 1 positive test per 100 and but I’ll also get 1 false positive per 100 – so it’s 1 in 2 that the test is correct?
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Bingo.
It’s much easier to think of it in terms of frequencies rather than percentages – human brains don’t handle percentages well.
This book schooled me in thinking the right way, and introduced me to that problem:
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Brookter – Hah! My oldest used to nibble at books when she was young.
TBH I’d just be bloody amazed that the little bastard Jones Minor brought the thing back (and if it wasn’t TOO badly eaten, then it could go back on the shelves).
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Trisk
Spot on…
Basically, the proportion of healthy people is so much greater than of sick people that the number of ‘false positive’s is the same as the number of ‘true positives’ (on these figures, obvs…)
The corollary is that spending time on improving the test so it’s better at finding true positives is often much less productive than in trying to improve its ability to identify true negatives.
[I think… OT will correct me if I’ve got that wrong…]
This wiki article explains the concept a lot better than I understand it…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity
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Eeek.
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This kind of stuff can definitely be heid-hurty
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One of my favourite topics is the difference between precision and accuracy in analytical techniques. Oh how people get muddled between them.
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@BB,
Q3. You survey the political environment in the UK since 2010. What is the probability that an MP chosen at random will be a book eater?
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