Creature Suit Analysis - Part 9 - A Study of Probability

[Guest]

BigfootXists,

Simplifying the system from 13 components to 2: If two events, A and B, are independent events, each with a probability of 0.5, then the likelihood of A and B both occurring is 0.5² = 0.25. If A and B are perfectly and positively correlated, such that if A occurs then B occurs, or if A doesn't occur then B doesn't occur, the probability of both A and B occurring is 0.5. If A and B are perfectly and negatively correlated, such that if A occurs then B doesn't occur, or if A doesn't occur then B does occur, the probability of both A and B occurring is 0. Without any knowledge of the correlation between A and B, the probability of both occurring ranges from 0 to the probability of the first step in the system, in this case 0.5.

Probability is a fraction between 0 and 1, but an uncertain probability is a range of fractions between 0 and 1. Just like Patty's true height is a single value, but her uncertain height can be expressed as a range of values.

Oh, and one can't build in correlations to a probability.

G. canadensis

Edited June 17, 2009 by Gigantopithecus canadensis

[Guest BigfootXists]

The 'Probability' expressed here is more along the lines of the definition that Merriam-Webster provides: 'the chance that a given event will (or, did) occur'. I'm not trying to be a smarty pants but; the Topic Title says: 'A Study in Probability' not 'A Study in Uncertain Probability'.

As I understand it; you are accepting the 1:2 odds for any one of the 'Circumstances' and then you are considering a chance that all of the circumstances could be 'perfectly and positively correlated' to come up with your high value of a 50% chance that the PGF was faked. Well, there is absolutely no way that any of the 13 circumstances are 'perfectly and positively correlated' so a 50% chance, given what we are accepting here, is impossible.

To what degree, for instance, Circumstance 12: 'Production convenience usually dictates that filmings in the wilderness (like forests) will be cheated to roadside locations...' and Circumstance 13. 'Success begets sequels' are correlated is not specified in this particular study.

The 1:2 odds for each circumstance are presented as follows:

"So, for example, let us say, in my list below, for one item, the usual industry practice is twice as likely to occur as an unusual or different practice". That premise stands alone and is not affected by anything else.

So, again, 1 in 8,192 was determined, in this study, as the probability that the PGF was faked.

[Bill]

BigfootXists:

G.C. is correct in his/her knowledge of statistical calculations, indeed far more knowledgable than I in that matter.

But you are correct in questioning the connecting of the stated individual probabilities. Most of them are, in fact, independent, meaning one occurance has no baring or influence on the next. Your example (items #12 and 13) is a fine example. The one has no connection to influencing the other.

But ultimately, the whole exercise was truly just a hypothetical, and i personally don't rely upon it to prove anything about the film. But a person could use such an exercise as a way of helping that person decide what areas of research to give more time to, the more probable ones given more immediate attention.

Bill

[Guest BigfootXists]

got ya! I understand that the Probability Study you did was hypothetical, and that it doesn't 'prove' anything about the film. My contention is that without 'proof' of Patty not being a suit (whatever that proof could possibly be), we are pretty much left with a 'Probability' (I really like this topic).

To me, GC's 'Uncertain Probability' is like saying 'well, sort of, maybe, sometimes'. I just don't buy into that as a scientific result, at least in this case.

I don't think anybody mentioned that your Premise (if I might call it that):

'So, for example, let us say, in my list below, for one item, the usual industry practice is twice as likely to occur as an unusual or different practice, so the odds of the unusual occurring are half as likely as the usual occurring (odds of 1:2).' -which I think is Awesome-

results in a 1 in 3 chance (yep) which, when compounded 13 times, is 1 chance in (3 to the 13th power) or 1 in 1,594,323. (I don't know too awful much but, I scare myself sometimes with general math and logic.) Regards,

BFX

Edited June 19, 2009 by BigfootXists

[Guest Tontar]

Sasquatch seen up close are often reported to have an "ape like" face (broad mouth, snub nose, heavy facial ridges around the eyes. "Patty" does not look all that human to me. Their feet are clearly not ours, as many tracks have demonstrated a mid-tarsal" break that human feet do not have. The limb ratios are closer to ape ratios than human.

Not natually, unless your're Groucho Marx

Mere reassertion of your claim does not change the evidence otherwise.

Indeed there are, and Patty displays them.

Morphologically speaking, the facts do not support your statement. Bigfoot displays a mix of human and ape traits, favoring the ape.

I never claimed they were "regularly" quadrapeds. I said that bi-modalism is the hypothesis that best fits the obersvational data currently to hand. They can be primarily bipedal and still revert to quadrapedal motion at need/will.

If we are to assume that Patty is the real deal, then we have to consider what Patty offers in terms of similarity to non-human apes and humans. We can debate what the film seems to suggest indefinitely, or we can seriously consider what the one remaining eyewitness to patty has to say about her appearance. I talked with Bob Gimlin several times at the Bigfoot Roundup, and he consistently repeated that she looked like a human, not an ape. Granted, a very hairy human, but a human nevertheless. If we are to accept patty, then we HAVE to accept what Bob Gimlin says about her. He says human, not ape. And again, everything about that film, aside from the hair, suggests human, not gorilla or orangutan or chimp. Nobody can claim she looks like a gorilla in a humanoid suit, that'd be silly because there's no way to disguise a gorilla to look like Patty. And there's no way that anyone can claim that she looks like a chimp trained to walk bipedal either, because she walks for all intents and purposes, just like us. The line dividing Patty from a human is very thin, requiring 40 plus years to come up with genuinely convincing arguments and measurements to support the idea that she is likely not a human in a suit. If it takes SO much effort to point out the scaling and proportional differences between Patty and a human, and even with those studies and reports there are still those who claim it is clearly a man in a suit, then the obvious conclusion is that she is more human than ape. The hair, the living in the woods naked, the slightly longer arms, all are traits that seem alien to humans, but morphologically she is far closer to us than to any known ape (non-human ape, okay?).

[Guest Tontar]

BFX:

Every film of photo has a varying degree of potential for analysis, and most have so little data to work with, it's hard to really arrive at any conclusions. The amount of image data we have in the PGF itself, and all the other Bluff Creek site visits, filmed and photographed, makes it a truly unique case, in terms of the potential for analysis. Plus having a 42 year old film is nice because image manipulation of that is so hard, for any technology of the time, that we can have a much higher degree of confidence that what we see is what Roger's camera captured.

Bill

Bill, I don't know if you have seen this cadbury ad or not, but it features a really nicely tailored gorilla suit, with a nicely flexible neck, and it is easily as realistic as Patty was in the PGF. We know this is a suit that is made with modern technology, and it is far more complex and dextrous than Patty would have needed to be, but it goes a long ways toward showing how realistic and natural a suit can now be made. I love the commercial and the tune, and maybe in a few years we will have a real bigfoot to model better costumes after (as opposed to "Harry" or the Messing With Sasquatch critter).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7boM22shBI...feature=related

[Guest Tontar]

Which gets us right back to Patty, who could never move in 4x4 mode. Either Patty is not a bigfoot or bigfoots do not 4x4.

Agreed. Patty walks enough like us to be extremely closely related to us, or a guy in a suit. She walks nothing like an "ape". I'm going to keep using the word "ape" to refer to non-human primates like gorillas and chimps and so on, in spite of the technicality that humans are a form of ape. And in any of the proposed videos or photos, the debate always rages as to whether or not we are seeing a human or a bigfoot, but never is the question raised as to whether we are seeing an ape, or gorilla. is it bigfoot, or a person, those are always the two questions. So, logically, the resemblance is much closer to humans than any known apes, so it just makes more sense to draw the relationship as well as the terminology, between bigfoot and humans, not between bigfoot and apes.

As only a bit of an aside, since it is related to what makes humans and apes different, has anyone researched how far back in our ancestral history our ancestors lost their coat of hair? We always use our lack of hair covering as something that separates us from apes, or animals. We like ot be unique and somehow divinely gifted and separate and above animals, the other worldly creatures that have a coat of hair. So I figure that humans lost their body hair at some point in evolutionary time, and I wonder often when exactly that may have been. having a hairy coat is natural for terrestrial mammals, and we should have a hair coat too, but we don't. I was reading an article that talked about when humans may have lost their hair covering, but I don't recall what they suggested. I know it is a bit of a taboo subject, sine we want to be above animals, and hairiness makes us look like animals. But the truth is, our ancestors had to have hair at some point, and evolutionary changes would have to account for our loss of our hair coats.

[Bill]

Tontar:

"As only a bit of an aside, since it is related to what makes humans and apes different, has anyone researched how far back in our ancestral history our ancestors lost their coat of hair? We always use our lack of hair covering as something that separates us from apes, or animals. We like ot be unique and somehow divinely gifted and separate and above animals, the other worldly creatures that have a coat of hair. So I figure that humans lost their body hair at some point in evolutionary time, and I wonder often when exactly that may have been. having a hairy coat is natural for terrestrial mammals, and we should have a hair coat too, but we don't. I was reading an article that talked about when humans may have lost their hair covering, but I don't recall what they suggested. I know it is a bit of a taboo subject, sine we want to be above animals, and hairiness makes us look like animals. But the truth is, our ancestors had to have hair at some point, and evolutionary changes would have to account for our loss of our hair coats. "

Actually, we didn't so much lose it as "remodel" it. Our bodies are still covered with hair folicules, but the hair now is a short hair withough much pigment, usually called velous hair (spelling might be wrong), also called "peachfuzz". So one little flick of a dna switch can produce hypertrichosis, where dense hair covers the body and the poor person usually ends up living the life of a sideshow freak.

But as to your question's besic intent, when did our hair change from an apelike assumed origin, that is pure conjecture (guessing, actually) because the fossil record has no data on skin and hair changes during hominid evolution. Plus, anthropologists actually don't know for sure why the hair changed, so not being sure why, they can't determine when, in the human evolutionary scheme.

On the other question about gorilla suits, with the materials today, especially the spandex fur materials, we can get pretty close to real, a whole lot closer than we could 40 years ago.

Bill

[Guest Crowlogic]

Overall hair follicle density on a human is more dense than that of a Chimp. It has also been found that feral humans such as children raised with wolves etc have in fact a discernable hair suit. It is thought to be the body?s reaction to being unclothed and having to moderate body temperature without artificial covering.

[Drew]

It has also been found that feral humans such as children raised with wolves etc have in fact a discernable hair suit. It is thought to be the body?s reaction to being unclothed and having to moderate body temperature without artificial covering.

Crow-Logic, I know you are going to cite this study, that shows Feral Humans growing a hair suit due to being unclothed.

I wait for your response.

[Guest Tontar]

Overall hair follicle density on a human is more dense than that of a Chimp. It has also been found that feral humans such as children raised with wolves etc have in fact a discernable hair suit. It is thought to be the body?s reaction to being unclothed and having to moderate body temperature without artificial covering.

I'm not so sure this is the norm. The most famous feral child was Tarzan, and he was raised by apes (who were quite hairy), and yet he remained even less hairy than even the average clothes wearing human. Almost to the extend of appearing shaved or waxed.

Aaron

[Guest Tontar]

Actually, we didn't so much lose it as "remodel" it. Our bodies are still covered with hair folicules, but the hair now is a short hair withough much pigment, usually called velous hair (spelling might be wrong), also called "peachfuzz". So one little flick of a dna switch can produce hypertrichosis, where dense hair covers the body and the poor person usually ends up living the life of a sideshow freak.

But as to your question's besic intent, when did our hair change from an apelike assumed origin, that is pure conjecture (guessing, actually) because the fossil record has no data on skin and hair changes during hominid evolution. Plus, anthropologists actually don't know for sure why the hair changed, so not being sure why, they can't determine when, in the human evolutionary scheme.

Some of the references that I have found suggest that our change in coat occurred anywhere from 1 to 3 million years ago, indicated by the evolutionary path of lice, and skin color (as if skin color was known?). The scientific, evolutionary theorists, postulate that losing the heavy hair coat was in response to hotter climates in Africa, where the skin would have evolved to a darker shade following the loss of the coat. That doesn't exactly explain why the lighter skinned people also lost their coats. Perhaps the lighter skinned people evolved from the darker skinned, although suggestions are that the hairy ancestors had light skin before losing the coats, and that dark skin was a response to the loss of coat. A lot of guessing. here's one, Neanderthal people lived in very harsh, cold climates. It is guessed that they had clothes, although it is not known. It is quite possible that they had a load of hair covering them, we do not know from bones whether they were hairless with clothes or hairy with a built in resistance to cold.

I think that being hair free is how we set our views on human versus animal, and it is thus difficult to imagine humans with a hairy coat. And so, if we see a hairy human in the woods, we call it an ape out of reflex and prejudice. Easier to see bigfoot as an ape than a human, when the primary differences reported, or even seen in the PGF, is the hair suit. It would be interesting to run a probability study on whether patty was a human or an ape, based on the visual and print evidence, as well as the eyewitness reports of Roger and Bob. Bob says it did not look like an ape, but looked human to him. A hairy human. Not a human in an ape suit, or an ape in human suit, but a human covered with hair. Why dismiss what he says, he was there at the time of the filming, and can fill in some details that don't come across in the film.

[Incorrigible1]

I'm not so sure this is the norm. The most famous feral child was Tarzan, and he was raised by apes (who were quite hairy), and yet he remained even less hairy than even the average clothes wearing human. Almost to the extend of appearing shaved or waxed.

Aaron

My sarcasm meter might be on the fritz, but do you realize Tarzan was a fictional character?

[Guest Tontar]

My sarcasm meter might be on the fritz, but do you realize Tarzan was a fictional character?

Oh no, I don't think so. I have seen most of his movies, and they look pretty real to me. Although, he seems to have different hair color from time to time, and varying styles of loincloth, but he always looks pretty real to me. And always without hair anywhere other than a long mane on his head. So being raised by apes did not cause his body to grow a hairier coat.

And yeah, I'm just trying to interject a bit of tension relief for fun. Seems like all this conjecture and discussion and even arguing about something that we really know very little about, even if it really exists, can get to be a bit harrowing and tense. Until someone finds a living one or a dead one and brings it out of the woods for the rest of the world to see, touch, probe and catalog, then at best we are left with conjecture and guessing. Even when it comes to something as widely accepted as our primeval ancestors very little is known about them. Like whether they were hairy or not. I'm guessing that our immediate ancestors and cousins that may have not evolved into us, may have been hairy like most all other primates, and that so far there is no way to tell if they were or weren't. If bigfoot exists, it could very well be a family member very close to us, it seems like it would be, other than the hairiness part. So reconciling the hair with our lack of hair, is something that would need to be considered if bigfoot ever comes out of the woods or the closet.

[Incorrigible1]

Thanks, Tontar! I'm still arranging for a calibration of my sarcasm meter, as it's been a little iffy, lately.

BTW, although it's been forty years since I've read Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, I still remember what a fine piece of escapist fiction it was.

I soon after discovered Robert E. Howard and the Conan mythos, long before Arnie thought of starring in a movie.