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Lucy Letby: Difference between revisions
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But the odds of rolling ''fifteen'' consecutive sixes are a shade better than one in half a trillion. You should start inspecting your die. It is far, far more likely that that the die is defective. (If you manufactured a half trillion dice, would not one of them be malformed?) | But the odds of rolling ''fifteen'' consecutive sixes are a shade better than one in half a trillion. You should start inspecting your die. It is far, far more likely that that the die is defective. (If you manufactured a half trillion dice, would not one of them be malformed?) | ||
This is the essence of the “shift pattern” evidence against Lucy Letby. Being premature neonatal infants and kept in hospital, these are children at heightened risk of “natural” death: that is why they are in hospital. The number of deaths per annum varies by year, but it is greater than zero. Let us say there are | This is the essence of the “shift pattern” evidence against Lucy Letby. Being premature neonatal infants and kept in hospital, these are children at heightened risk of “natural” death: that is why they are in hospital. The number of deaths per annum varies by year, but it is greater than zero. Let us say on average there are five infant mortalities in a year. In a given year with three 8-hour shifts in a day there are roughly 1000 shifts. The probability of an infant dying on a given shift — where we have no prior information about that infant or the persons on that shift — is therefore 5/1000 or 1/200. | ||
Mathematising this, this is the equivalent of rolling a 200-sided die where 199 sides are | Mathematising this, for each shift, this is the equivalent of rolling a 200-sided die where 199 sides are S (for “Safe”) and 1 is M (for “mortality”). A person working 240 shifts a year would expect to be on duty for between one and two mortalities per year. | ||
But this is not the right calculation, because | |||
There is much, much more chance of rolling an S than an M, but if you work two hundred shifts you would expect one M. What are the odds of rolling 6 “D”s in a row? It is straightforward to calculate: one in (200 * 200 * 200 * 200 * 200 * 200). One in 64 trillion. | |||
But this is not the right calculation, because there were 178 shifts | |||