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Rick Grunder wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 25, 2022 3:45 am

For whatever it may be worth here:

http://www.rickgrunder.com/parallels/mp117.pdf

That's very interesting and got me thinking. The value of a bit (12 1/2 cents) and the pieces of eight (dollar) and more especially the "two-bit whore"! It reminds me of a purple umbrella and a fifty cent hat and Zeppelin lyrics "With the butler and the maid and the servants three"!

So you better lay your money down! Alimony, alimony, paying your bills.

Hopping on with some numismatic fun, following Rick's post.

During Joseph Smith's life, the US was still utilizing a 1/2 cent coin.

I don't know how much exposure Joseph Jr. would have had to Continental currency (CC), but it was likely something Joseph Sr. would have been familiar with. Congress did the last round of issuing CC in 1779. There was a crazy wide range of denominations with CC. Most of it was done as denominations of a dollar. Probably the coolest (to me) was the 1/3 dollar. Getting back change in coins must've been an adventure. The lowest was a 1/6 dollar note.

Incidentally, beginning with the very first issue of CC, there was a $7 bill.

The values of CC were calculated in relation to the shilling (depending on state).





(Unrelated, but still fun -- there was a return to notes representing fractions of a dollar (aptly named, fractional currency) during the civil war. The 15c with a bust of Columbia is probably my favorite)

Tempting to see numbers everywhere, but the $7 CC bill and 1/3 dollar sure stand out. Things you never hear in seminary!

Since we're having fun, let's flip the script and treat this with a the "Team Bayes" hypothetical.

Question:
What if correspondences between Nephite currency in the Book of Mormon and the Grecian coin system in Lempriere were entirely faith promoting? How should "Team Bayes" weigh the evidence?

Executive Summary:
* 1/9: odds of a 7x ratio for the top coin (vs 2x to 10x in integers)
* (1/9)^2: odds of a 2x ratio for two sets of intermediate coins (vs 2x to 10x in integers)
* 1/20: odds of a 1.5x ratio for exchange between base cross-metal coins (vs 0.5 to 10 in 0.5x increments)
* (1/9)^2: odds of having 2 fractional coins in steps of 1/2x each (vs 1/2x to 1/10x, integer denominators)
* 1/20: odds of the system utilizing 2 metals, one being silver and the other gold or brass (vs 1 metal or 3+ metals, or metals of the same color)
* 1/50: odds of having cross-metal coin exchanges the same a non-integer ratio (1.5x to 1)
* Now, to be fair, the Greek system has an extra intermediate 2x value coin, so that is a "miss". We'll count that as 2:1 against Joseph.
* Also a "miss," one Nephite coin was gold, whereas the Grecian coin was brass. Nephites, however, had gold in abundance for making Temples and journaling plates. We'll call this a wash, due to local metal availability.

Customary hand-waving on non-sequitur, covariance, and annoying rules of Bayesian stats and independent variable multiplication.

And, voila: the odds that Joseph Smith "guessed" a system so similar to the ancient Greek coinage are about 590 million to one.


For comparison, the odds of drawing a Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292 million.

So in conclusion, Joseph guessing this Grecian coinage system correctly is about like winning the Powerball jackpot on the first try. No revisions. No editing. No notes. Dictated in 60 days. Worlds. Greatest. Guesser.

If Interpreter is ever dry on Friday math porn articles, perhaps this will count for the honorary 2022 Team Bayes ejaculatory submission.

Doctor Steuss wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 25, 2022 5:15 pm

Hopping on with some numismatic fun, following Rick's post.

During Joseph Smith's life, the US was still utilizing a 1/2 cent coin.

I don't know how much exposure Joseph Jr. would have had to Continental currency (CC), but it was likely something Joseph Sr. would have been familiar with. Congress did the last round of issuing CC in 1779. There was a crazy wide range of denominations with CC. Most of it was done as denominations of a dollar. Probably the coolest (to me) was the 1/3 dollar. Getting back change in coins must've been an adventure. The lowest was a 1/6 dollar note.

Incidentally, beginning with the very first issue of CC, there was a $7 bill.

The values of CC were calculated in relation to the shilling (depending on state).





(Unrelated, but still fun -- there was a return to notes representing fractions of a dollar (aptly named, fractional currency) during the civil war. The 15c with a bust of Columbia is probably my favorite)

Even in my time, in Britain (pre-decimalization), the shilling was an interesting piece of currency. Officially, the pound and the penny were the units of currency. But the shilling - worth 12 pence = 1/20 of a pound - had a special place in everyday transactions, because people talked about the less-than-a-pound amounts in terms of shillings and pence (pennies), and not as fractions of a pound. Colloquially, a shilling was often called a "bob", with the same word used as singular and plural. Five shillings was "five bob", not "five bobs".

So, for example, if something cost 16 pence, the price would be referred to as one shilling and 4 pence - or 1s 4p. To say this out loud you would often not mention the shilling at all - you'd say "one and fourpence".

There were also half-pound (10s) notes; 1/8 pound pieces; 1/10 pound pieces; six pence and three pence pieces; as well as pennies (about the size of a US silver dollar); half-pennies; and one-fourth pennies. These were called, respectively: 10 shillings; two-and-sixpence (colloquially "half a dollar"!!); 2 shillings colloquially "two bob"); sixpence colloquially "half a bob"); thruppence (2 distinct coin types); penny; ha-penny (soft 'a'); and farthing.

Another indication of the importance of the shilling was the guinea - a unit of money that was worth 21 shillings. I remember the guinea as a "gentleman's" unit, and more English than Scottish. Bets, club memberships, livestock prices, and real estate transactions might be quoted in guineas rather than pounds.

Learning to make change, and to do currency calculations, was interesting.

Edit for clarity.

I think this is a very significant finding. People keep saying "how could Joseph Smith xyz...." Simple - plagiarism.

Dr Moore wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 25, 2022 5:49 pm

Since we're having fun, let's flip the script and treat this with a the "Team Bayes" hypothetical.


[...]

Absolutely epic.