Trial of the century

[ewx]

How many times in one century can you have a trial of the century?

Comments

[kjaneway.livejournal.com]

Dunno.

How many times in a year can one have the "wedding of the year"?

I suspect the answer is something like: as often as the press can get away with it.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

20th century, you stand accused of being far too violent. How do you plead?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

As many as necessary. Once one trial surpasses the previous trial of the century, it becomes the new trial of the century.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Presumably a "trial of the century" must take about two weeks, and they can't overlap. Furthermore, you'd expect the time between totc's to increase according to some progression. Lets see. The probablility that any given trial will be a totc will be inversely proportional to the square of the amount of century elapsed. Oh, it's too complicated, I'll monte carlo it...

peter@isengard:~$ python
Python 2.1.3 (#1, Sep 7 2002, 15:29:56)
[GCC 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>> import random
>>> totc = 0 # trials of the century
>>> tq = -100000000 # quality of current totc
>>> for week in range(26 * 100): # 100 years, 26 fortnights
... ctq = random.gauss(0,1) # quality of this fortnight's big trial
... if ctq > tq: # best trial yet?
... tq = ctq
... totc += 1
...
>>> print totc
9


Nine. So there you have it.

[sparrowsion]

Ew, what happened to your indentation?

[womble2.livejournal.com]

It collapsed due to lack of <pre>.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Gah. Of all of the languages to be using when that happens...

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

A+!

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

<applauds>

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

But century can also mean any hundred years, not just one of the ones that tesselate contiguously since the year dot. So perhaps "trial of the century" could mean "a trial of at magnitude than appears less than every hundred years on average."

But I'm only saying that for the sake of being contrary :)