In Math We Trust

The word of mathematics is true and it can be trusted.

That's what the statistician said, and so it must be right.

A statistical study of the works of John Lennon and Paul McCartney has settled an issue that has burned for decades now (who knew?):  John Lennon wrote "In My Life," not Paul McCartney.  The study took 10 years, and its based on math, so it has to be true!  Math doesn't lie!  Trust us, we're statisticians!

Well, they are.....

How is this proven, you might reasonably ask?  We can't ask John Lennon, more's the pity (I never wish ill of the dead); and whatever Paul McCartney might say is not trustworthy.  I mean, after all, it was the 60's, right?

Cutting to the chase, it turns out Lennon wrote the whole thing. When you do the math by counting the little bits that are unique to the people, the probability that McCartney wrote it was .018 — that's essentially zero. In other words, this is pretty well definitive. Lennon wrote the music. And in situations like this, you'd better believe the math because it's much more reliable than people's recollections, especially given they collaborated writing it in the '60s with an incredibly altered mental state due to all the stuff they were ingesting.

Hey, it's science!  Trust us!  Math is truth, and it must be trusted!  Especially if you lived through the '60's, amirite?

It's a matter of faith, you see.  We can't ask Lennon; we can ask McCartney; but we can't trust McCartney, who after all is only human.  So we must trust math!

And if you just substitute "God" for "math" in this argument, you get an argument made by fundamentalists and others whom we don't admire for their reasoning, but the difference between the two in this case is almost imperceptible.

Okay, okay, statistical analysis is based on a recognized and examinable set of propositions that some religious reasoning may not likewise present.  But the usual slam on religious thinking is that it cannot be proven, only asserted.  So how do we prove the results of this 10 years of mathematical pursuit is correct?  How do we prove McCartney had nothing to do with "In My Life," that it was all Lennon?  We can't ask Lennon; we've rejected McCartney's testimony out of hand (the math proves him wrong!).  How do we prove this conclusion, except to accept it on faith, to trust, in other words (which is all "faith" really means) the math?

Would math lie to you?

I'm old enough to remember probably apocryphal stories about how bumblebees couldn't fly because they violated the laws of aerodynamics (whatever those are, right?) and how trains were mathematically proven, in the 19th century, to never be able to travel at 60 mph because the air would be sucked out of the carriages.  I have no doubt Snopes or something could disabuse me of the validity of both these hoary chestnuts.  Then again, as the adage has it, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

But really, the question here is:  how do we know?  This is a thesis that cannot be disproven, especially if you insist the math is true and human memory is false.  The conclusion is true because the math is trusted, and the math cannot be false because the math reveals the truth!  Except, of course, it doesn't; it reveals what we say it reveals.  We take on faith that it is correct (do you have the chops to review this analysis and refute its construction?).  But more importantly, the statistician insists the math is true and it can be trusted.

"Believe me," he says.

Huh.